The JibJab Blog

Stick Your Face In It!

Category: Behind the Scenes

  • Rock Location Scouting!

    Welcome to the first part in our making of the Holiday Rock videos!  For this epic production we wanted to give the most realistic rock concert experience possible.  The best way to do that?  Hit up some real venues!  We made calls and visits all over LA, leaving no historic venue unturned.  The Viper Room,…

  • Go Behind the Scenes with ElfYourself!

    Another year, another two new ElfYourself videos to add to the ever growing collection at ElfYourself.com!  This year we got to make good on an idea we’ve been excited about tackling for years, ElfYourself Surf! Before we got to animating, we had dancers come down to our freshly painted blue-screen to film some new moves.…

  • Trick or Track

    For the Monster Rap, we were lucky enough to get  Keith Patterson, AKA Kap-er from P-Dash Media in NYC to produce killer track vocals for us.  Keith had previously collaborated with us in our Brooklyn days with voice over for our classic Geezer series.  We’ve dug up “Geezers the Musical” so you can hear some…

  • Terrorize Townsfolk Just to Keep’em in Check

    If you frequent our site, you may recognize some faces animated into Frankenstein! Several folks from the JibJab team got to have their heads featured as angry villagers, including most of our summer intern crew that worked on the short so diligently. Meanwhile, we had Jeff take some awesome photos with the beard he was…

  • That Poor Cat

    The cat in Frankenstein really grew on us, in fact we loved him so much we found ways to cram the kitty in all over the place. Here’s a better look at the little furball in action.

  • The Good, Evil Doctor

    For Frankenstein in a Minute, our designs were a bit stretchier and wackier than usual, as apparent in the evil Doctor’s long limbs, good for grabbing things off screen.

  • Frankenstein’s ReAnimatic

    Take a peek at our animatic for Frankenstein, sans the texture and colors to come.  It will give you a whole new appreciation for the piece when we publish the insanely background art next week!

  • The Imaginary Ones and the Twos

    DJ Adrienne mixes it up, blue screen style!  This video concludes our behind the scenes look at the making of our Monster Rap , now onto the making of Frankenstein!

  • Bob Your Head

    When you take creatures away from our Monster Rap and leave just the floating head,  you can really get a grasp of how much movement we have to match a face to in any given scene.  Also, it’s really spooky. The more faces that go into the scene, the harder it is for us to…

  • Incantation, Levitation

    It’s no secret how we got our witch to levitate in our Halloween Rap (black magic) but we thought it would be fun everyone to see our witch before and after our team worked their blue screen voodoo. Special shout out to Adrienne Spiridellis for her bewitching moves.

  • Fish Eyed Monsters

    The Monster Rap called for us to mimic both the angles and styles of your basic hip hop music video, so the first step in nailing the look was nabbing a wide angle lens for that fish-eye effect. Here’s he look in motion.  Of note, we are trying extremely hard to avoid that easy wrap/rap…

  • Jury Rigged Rig

    When you’re filming music videos like the Monster Rap, you’ve got to use what you’ve got to get the right angles and movement.  And sometimes all you’ve got is an office chair and an extra able body. Quit laughing, it works!

  • Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

    Liquids are notoriously some of the hardest moving things to animate, so when it came to creating a bubbling witch’s cauldron for the Monster Rap, a real brew was the thing to do. Our solution? Ian took the project to the kitchen and brought some tomato soup to a boil. And here is the bubbly…

  • Birthday Balloon Bloopers

    We’ve launched a snappy new 9 second eCard today that features a bunch of balloons! Though it may be short, you have no idea how much work went into making the card you see above.  It all started when Evan wrote a zippy little song about birthday balloons, one of the most iconic Birthday images…

  • Operatic eCards are Here!

    Two new Operatic eCards were launched today, one for Birthdays and another as an Apology eCard!  We had an honest-to-goodness opera singer (Christopher Macchino) record the vocals for this one, and it took the eCard to the next level, making it so catchy that we’ve all had “The Barber of Seville” stuck in our heads…