The JibJab Blog

Stick Your Face In It!

Last Days to Order DVDs, Magnets, Puzzles!

Heads up! If you’re thinking about getting JibJab Christmas presents, the absolute latest you can order our gifts is this weekend! Standard shipping options are close now, but there is still time for expedited shipping options. You’ll have to order for most hard good items before 8pm Pacific Time so we have the ability to personalize it and ship it your way. Some items may have until tomorrow (Sunday) night. Make sure to check the cut off times when you are checking out. View our hardgood gift store here.

We put a lot of love into our store this year, adding new items like Magnets and Puzzles, testing them out in the office and feeling sort of like Tom Hanks in BIG. Toy testing is serious business!

In addition to our photo-based gifts, our video-based gift deadlines are nearing as well. You can order up until a few days before Christmas, but we recommend getting them in early just in case. DVD cut off times are as follows: for 2-Day Express shipping, order by 12/21, 8pm PT. For Overnight Express, order before 12/22, 8pm PT. DVDs are available after creating most Starring You videos on this page.

We took great care designing our DVD cases with art that fits each video, putting you and your friends on the cover! If you order one to give for Christmas, make sure to let us know! We’ll post any reaction videos right here on the blog.

December 18, 2010
Coding With Charlie Brown

Poe popped the Charlie Brown Christmas special on while the tech team coded today and Anthony nabbed the snapshot. Anyone not working here is now officially jealous.

December 16, 2010
Santa Claus Time Lapse Videos!

Max Winston just sent over these amazing time lapses of his work on our “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” music video, which you can cast yourself in over here. He created the incredible puppets you see in the short and brought them to life with hours upon hours of tedious stop-motion animating, which you can experience in a matter of seconds! Check out more of his incredible puppets from Chowder and Flapjack on his blog.

December 15, 2010
Putting the Hair in the Hairband

Holiday Rock was almost finished and looked great. It needed one final touch to take it above and beyond anything we’ve ever done before. We broke new ground with this one. Maybe even made some internet history…

December 14, 2010
The 2010 Year in Review arrives Sunday on CBS!

Why are there cameras, lights and mics in our humble pirate ship themed studio? CBS Sunday Morning, an American Institution, visited today for a few interviews, a tour and plenty of great material which they will air alongside the WORLD PREMIERE of our 2010 Year in Review; “So Long To Ya 2010”! You may think you’re ready for it, but you’re not. In fact, we’re not ready for it either! Back to work!

Oh and make sure to tune in to CBS on Sunday Dec. 19th for the video and more!

December 13, 2010
5 Versions!?!

We set out to make make FIVE SEPARATE versions of every holiday piece we produced this year, which was a massive challenge. Why so many versions of each video? For casting we wanted to let people choose between a video featuring anywhere between 1-5 folks, meaning different layouts, grouping and shots for every incarnation. While shooting we would switch out rockers for smaller group shots, peeling them down one by one for every version of the video.

For many of the other videos you’ll notice that we remove extra characters dependant upon how many you cast, but with Rock, it was impossible to hide the rest of the band ALL the time. Sometimes shots were just too epic to cut out. And it feels really good to have a full band behind you, even if you want to cast one person, and even if they end up being the stock heads we provide!

It took a lot of work, but we managed to crank out 5 videos that featured 1-5 casting this year, 25 variations in total. Some folks are never satisfied though, whenever we offer 1-5, we get requests for groups of 6, 7 and 8! Check out a comparison video for ROCK below.

December 10, 2010
Happi Honika!

We are crazy about rapper Smooth-E’s Honika Electronica! The Tron spoofing song premiered last year before the new film even started advertising, making the rap almost better this year since the movie’s hype has grown. With that in mind that we decided to contact the world’s greatest Jewish rapper to see if we could get it on our site for Hanukkah this year. Smooth-E was nice enough to oblige, remixing the sound into a much more bite sized Hanukkah treat (read: shorter) with the same killer Hanukkah beat (read: awesome).

Like what you hear? Then you should definitely visit www.SmoothE.tv, where you can find tour dates and download songs including an extended cut of Honika Electronica! And Jewish or not, make sure to check out and send the Honika Electronica electronic card before that last candle goes out!

December 8, 2010
PURE ROCKIN’ ENERGY

The only thing more fun than making a Holiday Rock video on our website is making a Holiday Rock video FOR our website. Our entire staff was amped to rock out for the taping of our biggest and baddest holiday card ever. While the focus of the final video is that it’s STARRING YOU, here’s a video STARRING US.

Many left hoarse from screaming, Jeff got some nasty whiplast from headbanging his hair around and Jess Harnell, Rock Sugar’s lead singer, freakin CHIPPED HIS TOOTH on the microphone he was rocking so hard. Jess kept on singing, chipped front tooth be damned.

The same level of rock applied for The Dreidel Song, where we shredded until the power gave out.

December 7, 2010
Elf… and ElfYourself!

Evan was watching TV (to be specific, the movie Elf!) with the fam when what should pop up on screen? A commercial OfficeMax had made for ElfYourself! Luckily, thanks to the miracle of DVR they could rewind and nab a second glance at all of it’s widescreen goodness. Elfin awesome!

December 6, 2010
Pics From The JibJab Rock Show!

We really got to live out childhood dreams on the shoot for Holiday Rock. On the day of filming we invited the entire JibJab staff down to the venue to rock out with us and create a lively crowd of rockers, along with any and all unemployed friends we knew (there are a lot of those these days). Having real lights, fog, sound system, a wall of amps, guitars, drums, a crowd, massive camera rig and ROCK STARS completed the experience for us.

Shooting was a blast, see tons of photos from our rock out session over on our Facebook to learn even more about how we pulled everything off!

December 3, 2010
Drums and Dreidels

We filmed Holiday Rock and Hanukkah Rock on the same day and one of the nicer little touches that you may notice in the background was this hand painted Dreidel bass drum image, created by Justin.

December 2, 2010
Movember Men!

November has come to a close, and with it the Movember, a month of mustache growth in order to raise awareness and funds for male cancer. JibJabbers Bennett and Anthony both jumped on board the initiative and grew two handsome mustaches this month, enduring much ridicule and awkward stubble along the way. Together they’ve raised $600 thanks to their facial hair feats, we ask you to push it over the top and please consider a donation to the cause!

Click here to donate to Anthony (left) and here to donate with Bennett (right). Proceeds benefit the Prostate Cancer Foundation (www.pcf.org) and LIVESTRONG (www.livestrong.org). Our MoBros thank you from the bottom of their hairy hearts!

December 1, 2010
Suiting Up Rock Stars!

For both Hanukkah Rock and Holiday Rock we wanted the boys of Rock Sugar to be sporting seriously decorative duds. To accomplish this, we reteamed with costume designer Leighton Bowers, who had previously helped us bring the super-suit in He’s Barack Obama to life last year. As if that wasn’t cool enough, she has also recently worked on costumes for Inception and the upcoming Captain America movie!

Our research lead us to choose Christmas clothes with lots of red but that skipped the green and went right for dark black leather. Hanukkah clothes sported white and flairs of blue, mixed with more black.

Our Rockers would now be dressed to the 11’s, and ready to strut their stuff on stage. See how it all turned out here and make a Rock eCard for either Christmas or Hanukkah… or check out more costume pictures in our album on Facebook!

November 29, 2010
Meet the Rockers, Rock Sugar!

We had the venue for our Holiday Rock, now we needed a bona fide rock band to make the production as authentic as possible. Lucky for us, our buddy Jess Harnell just happened to head up a kickass group of rockers who had precisely the skills (and the hair) we were looking to feature in our headbangin’ holiday jam. Jess himself is sort of legendary, you’ve heard his voice as Wakko Warner on Animaniacs and Captain Hero on Drawn Together. JibJab fans may also recognize Harnell’s voice as the lead from our Original He’s Barack Obama. A man of many talents, he performs regularly with his band Rock Sugar, a group self described as “the worlds first 80’s pop/metal mash up band”.

The sound and energy these guys brought to the table is more than apparent in our Starring You video. These guys brought it onstage for our live rock show video shoot, whipping guitars around, twirling drumsticks and belting out big time. We can’t recommend more that you try to see them live, and show them a little love by “liking” their Facebook page!

Next up, we’ll show you how we created their outfits then show you the boys in action on stage! Stay tuned!

November 26, 2010
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, the Music Box, the Troubadour were all in the running to be the location at which we would rock the stage. In the end, The Whisky A-Go-Go was the way to go, with two floors with was both an intimate space and a large enough room to feel like a true sold out rock arena. See pictures from our scout trip to the Whisky here!

November 23, 2010