The JibJab Blog

How do you make a big Broadway style prop? Foamcore, Gold spray paint, sparkly foam and a Bedazzler!

Once Evan finished building the prop he passed it off to Ian for filming. Here he is withe some hooks and fishing wire lifting it into frame…

This sequence was ALL Romney! Here’s his little Glenn Beck puppet as it neared completion…

And here he is showing us the mechanics of the Jihad Jane puppet…

And here he is with Jeff working out the scale and the fall of the rainbow flag before Trish went off to sew it…

Finally, all of the puppets in this sequence were just too darn funny not to show one more time. Here they are stacked on the table in a lump after filming was completed…

Michelle Obama caught a bunch of slack this year for using Air Force Two to take 40 of her friends on a lavish vacation she took to Spain. So how do we illustrate it? Have the first lady dressed like a princess perched atop golden airplane! We went to the toy store and bought a good sized plane. After spray painting it gold we set to work building the puppet…

As a side note, the First Lady puppet’s outfit was loosely modeled after Tiana, Disney’s first African American princess from ‘The Princess and the Frog’. Too bad that film released in December of 2009 instead of a month later then it would have even been MORE fitting for a 2010 year in review…

There were a lot of high-highs and low-lows this year. To see a bit of both, we decided to include Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ acquisition of The Washington Post (as well as his mentioning of the Amazon flying delivery drone?!?) as well as Paula Dean who probably regrets saying a certain word that cost her her reputation as America’s favorite southern-cooking chef.

Home | Last: Scene 18 – Miley and Sinead | Next: Scene 20 – Blurred Lines

THis scene had two components. First, there were the puppets doing their business then there was actually giving them something to slide down. Here’s some raw puppet footage…

For the plane, Jeff took the fuselage that he had built for the previous scene, added a wing and set it up on some rollers. You’ll notice the camera set up in the lower left hand corner of the scene. He then slowly pulled the plane away from the camera for after the characters made their jump…

Finally, here’s some sweet viz dev stuff from when we were actually gonna build the Jet Blue-Guy puppet. Ultimately it made more sense for Obama and Biden to be featured in the shot but you have to admit, this would have been a funny puppet!

This scene was a ton of fun to produce. First off, we got to see cute, fuzzy puppets getting physically abused which is always good for a laugh!

Next, Ian got to make this beautiful little sculpture which we filmed to look 18 feet tall….

And finally, given that we are not really a puppet shop and don’t have all the proper equipment, we had to figure out how to rig a set up so that we could actually see what we were doing in camera. The way we handled it? One camera, filming the ACTUAL camera and sending a feed of that screen to a monitor that was facing Ian and Alex. Now THAT’S thinkin’!

This scene started with some amazing character studies by Justin which were then transformed into three dimensions by Mike with nothing more then foam, plush and a hot glue gun…

Notice Rahm’s sunken eyes peering out over Mike’s shoulder…

There are also some things we try that don’t always work out the way we’d planned. We originally wanted to place the three characters in the oval office set that Alex had built. We figured 1) it’s a great way to illustrate Rahm leaving the team and 2) it’s a great way to get more use out of a beautiful prop. The problem was that when we combined the footage, the characters started to get a bit lost and over powered by the set. We ultimately decided to go with a simple, bold blue background to make everyone ‘pop’. Here’s a sample of what could have been…

This was an intense sequence that crammed a BOAT load of information (and puppets) into about 2 milliseconds! First up, Russian Spies…

As a reminder, the news story was that there was a super cute, red-headed, Russian Spy leading a double life in the US. Justin designed an awesome retro, James Bond-esque throw back which Trish used as a base to sew up one of her infamous plushies…

Once the puppet was built and photographed, Dave printed it onto a tiny newspaper then placed it in itty-bitty puppet hands for the shot…

Next up was Time Square…

Dave built an insanely elaborate set with functioning lights, smoke on a geared stick and a pretty sweet looking hot dog stand! This set was so sweet, it’s a shame it had less than a second of screen time in the end product…

There was also a big batch of New Yorker puppets that Trish sewed up that are barely visible in the final shot but beautiful non the less…

And last but not least, immigration…

There was a bundle of Mexican looking plush dolls that Trish sewed up for this shot and it was a real challenge to convey stereotypical Mexican without being racist. We think she did a pretty sweet job! And once again, Dave built the set for this one. Here’s a rough comp that was laid out before shooting the final footage…

In our minds this is the be-all-end-all of all puppets! We joke around the studio that Mike ‘has scale issues’ because he loves to make BIG puppets so what better, bigger character to give him than the Governator himself!

The only direction that was given at the start of this scene was to make sure the character felt like a puppet version of every other collaged illustration we’d done of Ahnuld – half naked, insanely buff and packin’ heat! Here are some initial designs that Alex and Justin turned out. The one on the end is what Mike ultimately based his sculpt on…

Once he had something to sink his teeth into, Mike was off to the races with glue gun in hand. Here’s a glimpse at the evolution of a ROCKIN’ puppet…

Finally, here’s a clip of the Swazzle-masters in action. Notice that the arms of the puppet aren’t even attached. This gave the puppeteers the ability to do whatever they wanted but when filmed at the right angle it looks like one unified character. That, plus the nerf gun we spray-painted black was pretty darn heavy!

Once again, we proudly present… DANCING puppets!

In the ‘Making the Cut’ post we talked about how this scene was originally supposed to focus on Bush and Cheney for ‘Inherited Wars’ and Kim Jung Il and Mahmoud Achmedinejad for ‘Nuclear Threats’ but the dancing puppets were just too darn funny to cut. Here’s a clip of some raw, unedited puppeteering mastery in action…

Another thing worth pointing out about the two puppet dancing sequences is just how gorgeous the background designs are. The mark of incredible background art is that you should not even notice it! (Kinda depressing, huh?) The backgrounds are there to support and frame the characters without pulling away the viewers attention. They help establish the mood and ‘feeling’ of a scene without drawing any attention onto themselves. It’s kind of like a good offensive line in football. If they do their job right the quarterback looks like a rockstar and if they don’t perform the team just loses! You might say, “Oh, those are just words back there” but you have no idea of all the considerations that go into making the selections. There’s font selection, color, how light or bold, how readable should the words be, and on and on. These layouts by our lead designer Will are just so sweet we thought they deserved their own moment in the sun…

This scene might be a bit more of an obscure reference but we managed to sneak it in anyway. It happened at Fortune Magazine’s “Most Powerful Women Summit” at about 27 seconds into this video. To the President’s credit, he was pretty quick with a good humored response. For us, it was just fun to build a wonky Presidential podium out of foam core and wood paneled stickers! Here’s a shot of Justin’s ‘Presidential Seal’…

When we filmed the scene the seal was held in with a pin and the shot required all three puppeteers to nail the action in unison. 1) lift the podium 2) pop Obama 3) smack the podium 4) pull the pin. The Swazzle guys thought it was a piece of cake but we were amazed at the timing and coordination…

As a side note, one of the great thing about working with the Swazzle guys is they never stop having a good time! Even when we couldn’t get our janky foamcore props to coordinate they just kept acting…

We were about a week and a half away from wrapping up the video when the news hit that President Obama got clocked in the head during a basketball game and had to get 12 stitches to the lip! Once again (and we can’t say this enough) there is nothing funnier than puppets and physical violence so we knew we had a new punchline for the end of the piece. We quickly called Jim Meskimen, our voice for Joe Biden, and had him record a few lines from home. After he emailed them over to us Amia ran to the sporting good store and picked up a kid’s sized basketball. Two days later the puppeteers were in to film the new ending. Being able to react quickly and turn on a dime is one of the pure joys of working in a small studio environment. We doubt Disney, Dreamworks or Pixar can squeak a gag into a film 3 days before a release! (But then again, we wish we had their ticket sales!)

Here, for your enjoyment, is puppet Obama getting hit in the head with a basketball one more time…

So here’s another gag that we filmed that ultimately didn’t make the cut. After Obama got pegged in the head with a basketball in the previous scene we thought it could be funny to cut back and have him holding a bloody rag to his lip for the final dance. It was a mildly clever idea but the entertainment value was no where near having Obama shake his stuff with full fledged enthusiasm!

We built puppets. We built sets. And we destroyed our studio.  There’s too much behind the scenes photos  share even more stuff, view our Facebook photo album here!

As is typically the case with a big ‘Behind the Scenes’ effort, we imagine if you made it to the last post that you are most likely a fan of JibJab (Or maybe this year you’re just REALLY into puppets?) In either event we want to say, “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!” for taking the time to watch our work and share it with your friends and family. We remind ourselves everyday that if it weren’t for you watching and spreading our work we wouldn’t be able to do this for a living so we are eternally grateful!

Now, we are honored to present you with the AMAZINGLY talented folks who helped make this year’s video something we are proud to call a JibJab!

“So Long to Ya, 2010”

Directed by: Evan & Gregg Spiridellis
Written by: Gregg Spiridellis, Scott Emmons
Art & Design: Evan Spiridellis, Romney Caswell, Mike Chiechi, Ian Worrel, Kevin Elam, Jeff Gill, Justin Parpan, Trish Tatman, Alex Chechik, Dave Bergmann, Will Staehle
Compositing & FX: Anthony Denha, Tom Horvath
Puppeteers: Swazzle (Sean Johnson, Patrick Johnson, Artie Espisito)
Music Producer: John Frizzell
Voice Talent: Gabriel Mann, Jim Meskimen
Audio Engineer: Frederik Wiedmann
Sound Design: Jeff Shiffman, Evan & Gregg Spiridellis
Production Support: Lauren Lloyd, Amia Tadjalli, Maureen Tzudiker, Robbie Harrison