The JibJab Blog

Stick Your Face In It!

A JibJab Panel at SXSW? Yes Please!

SXSW, the conference/festival for everything interactive, film and music held an open call for panel ideas this summer, which we could not resist. There are a few thousand entries for panels to be held at the interactive portion of the fest, and we think we’ve got something that’s never been done before, a panel that aims to gather JibJab and the folks behind Elf Yourself, the Simpsonizer, Mad Men’s avatar creator and viral personalized media from all over the net to discuss the phenomenon of sharing Starring You videos and posting personalized profile pictures.

How does the technology work? Who are the major creators of these web sensations? What is next in personalized entertainment? You’ll get these answers and then some come March if our panel gets picked! You can help us get a leg up on the competition by clicking here and voting for our concept. Don’t be afraid to browse around too, there are some awesome ideas and there’s room for more than one panel. See you in Austin!

August 18, 2010
Goodbye Rockiltree

After 6 years of JibJabbing, longtime writer and Director of Development Andy Ochiltree left JibJab for business school on Friday… and we’re sad. We threw him a grand bash complete with Andy masks, which we found ourselves drawing on, affixing to walls, affixing to Ochiltrees and affixing to each other. We’ll miss Andy, but hey, there’s a little bit of Andy in all of us now. Check out a feature Wired did on Andy a few years ago, as well as a feature on his writing over at Cold Hard Flash.

August 16, 2010
Techno Jumper

Welp, Skyler had these Power Strider spring-loaded-stilt-legs delivered to the JibJab offices. Needless to say, they deserved a test-run in our parking lot. He took them down to Venice beach where a local dubbed him “Techno Jumper”. We think the name fits well.

August 12, 2010
Go Deeper into The Latex

Whoa. We just released The Latex, an awesome parody of The Matrix (duh) that you can star in! Some incredible artwork got jammed into this one and it would be a shame not to share hi-res images of our backgrounds with you guys. Click the images below for a better look, right click to save and make into a wallpaper and check out some additional art on our Facebook page!

August 10, 2010
From 2007: Looking Back at Unnecessary Force

It’s early August and the entire staff is hard at work on, of all things, Halloween content. What’s crazier is that those who aren’t working on Halloween stuff are working on Christmas stuff. Rather than take a peek at seasonal stuff out of season, we thought it would be fun to do a throwback and revisit the making of our fake movie trailers in the summer of 2007.

Three years back, Adam and Andy had together written a series of 1-2 minute movie trailers for films that didn’t exist. The idea was to have all sorts of fake movie trailers that you could star in, a full library of every genre. One was a horror movie by the name of Math Camp Massacre, another was an action film called Unnecessary Force, both of which we produced. Two others –Lady Lovekill, a film noir style trailer, and a Blaxploitation spoof named Espresso didn’t make it past the development phase (but never say never). Here’s a pretty funny scratch track from what could have been a bumper for the series.

We produced these at the same time as many Starring You dances and once we found visitors were going craziest over the stuff like Disco and Charleston, we changed direction a bit. Looking back at Unnecessary Force, the project was crazy ambitious. Along with the usual voice over, art and animation, it allowed you to cast up to 6 people. We even had motion designer John Cranston (Important Things with Demetri Martin, College Humor) make up an action packed 3D title sequence for the trailer. You can view the full sequence for the first time embedded below.

August 9, 2010
Supporting Local Farmers at JibJab

It must be grocery week at JibJab! In addition to our shout out to the folks at Ready, Set, Bag!, Gaby has taken up an initiative to get us some vitamins and minerals, all while supporting local community schools and farmers. We’re now getting weekly bags of veggies and fruits from CSA California, a group that gets produce from local farms with $2 of every bag’s cost going to schools for their garden and/or nutrition programs. We got our first delivery today and the quality was off the hook, so if you’re in So Cal we suggest checking it out. The list of previous bags is pretty hard to resist.

August 5, 2010
Ready, Set, JibJab!

JibJab buddy Oren Jacob has been traversing the country, stirring up support for the movie Ready, Set, Bag!, a film that follows eight folks in their quest to be named the best grocery baggers in the country. Oren is executive producing, with his wife Justine in the director’s seat, and together they’ve had the folks from Groupon, Auto Tune the News and DJ Mike Relm give R,S,B! big shout-outs over the past few weeks. Since the competition takes these baggers from all over the USA and brings them to Vegas, we’ve decided to add to the mix by putting them in a very Vegas cabaret.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

They may be doing the can-can, but we all know that the best bagging method is can-box-jar-can. Did we mention that a portion of ticket proceeds are going to food banks across the country? Because they do. Click here to find out more about Ready, Set, Bag! and as an additional bonus, click here to cast yourself in The Can-Can for free! This week only, so do the cabaret today!

August 3, 2010
The Latex is Coming!

We are one week away from the launch of The Latex, our big, bad summer blockbuster done up JibJab style. The original idea has been brewing here for years, ever since we made our “The Latex” postable. To tide you over until next week’s big release, here is a preview of some of the character designs we’ve cooked up!

August 2, 2010
2006 Flashback: Double Rainbow All the Way!

Double rainbows were just as incredible four years ago as they are today. Back in 2006, our whole office had to step outdoors to catch a glimpse of a rare spectacle in Southern California, where it hardly rains at all! It’s so intense…

July 30, 2010
Intern Inception

This summer we have had four amazing interns helping us out on the production side of the offices. They’re either really motivated, dedicated or just bored with anything that’s not animation. It’s not surprising to see them pulling late nights, or even early mornings… which opens them up to a bit of embarrasment every once in and while.

Evan writes “I get in between 5 and 6 every morning. I came in on Tuesday and saw Tyler and Ryan working, with Dylan passed out on the floor. The next morning I came in and Dylan had pulled a SECOND all nighter in one week. He is working in his own Halloween video… so he’s really motivated.”

Our favorite part of the video is when he says, “I wasn’t really asleep”, 10 seconds after the camera was jammed in his face and he didn’t budge. So the question remains, was he or wasn’t he asleep? We’ll let you decide. Watch the video, hit the poll and let us know. In the meantime, we salute you Dylan… and the whole intern staff, your efforts are recognized and extremely appreciated. 😀

July 27, 2010
JibJabbers at Nerdy Gras

We’ve posted a photo album from our exploits in San Diego over the weekend. Thanks to the many fans we met, hope you enjoy your JibJab schwag!

July 26, 2010
Con Artists

JibJab is going to Comic-Con! In total almost a dozen JibJabbers are headed down to San Diego this weekend, and while there isn’t an official JibJab booth (next year!) we will be out and about, with rare JibJab collectibles in hand to give away to fans. Some of us are exhibiting our personal art, like Justin at the Goblin-Fish Press booth. Others of us won’t be confined to tables, but will be roaming the floors in search of peeps and peers to talk to. Wanna high five some JibJab artists? Tweet us at our twitter account Friday-Sunday and we’ll tweet you back with our location! We’ve got t-shirts for the first 10 people who find us.

July 22, 2010
Flash Back to the Great Sketch Experiment!

Back in 2006 we gathered John Landis and some of the best minds in comedy for an experiment the likes the world has never seen! We had so much great behind the scenes footage, we wanted to make it all available again! Click below to watch the intro video, see the final entries, browse behind the scenes and find out where all these creative people have been spending their time over the last 4 years!

July 21, 2010
Extra Creepy Crawlers

Our latest project started with a “Thank You” song written by Steffon and Arlette Moody. How Justin and Mike came to the idea for a subterranean chorus of creepy crawlers, even they don’t know. We’ve posted up an album on Facebook featuring the art that brought our new eCard together, with sets made of clay and intricate puppets. See the finished eCard here, enjoy a nice big version of Justin’s strata spanning concept art below!

July 20, 2010
MOVIECLIPS Mixer!

We just had another web start-up join us in the building, so we invited them over to our studio for a beer. The group, MOVIECLIPS.com is dedicated to categorizing every single awesome movie moment into one searchable site. Pretty worthwhile pursuit, eh? You can check them out at their website, where their collection grows bigger by the week!

July 16, 2010