The JibJab Blog

Stick Your Face In It!

Behind the Scenes With The King

With so much Soul Train action all over our site, it might be easy to miss all the intricate new birthday and baby cards we just launched! There are original songs, dances and lots of zingers up. One of our favorites is The King, a rocking and rolling 50’s style birthday bop that will have your toes tapping and knees buckled. We touted a teaser for the King’s Birthday song a few weeks ago to good buzz, hopefully he is popular, because we want to make more! Check out these up close photos of the puppets that Mike made, they’re really quite complicated and we’re stunned at their attention to detail!

September 11, 2009
Matt, Meredith, Ann and Al Aboard the Soul Train!

We were lucky enough to be featured on the Today Show this morning, casting the hosts as grooving Soul Train dancers to hilarious results! The segment was definitely worth sharing, so click the image below to watch Roker and Co shake their groove thangs! Also, don’t forget to follow them on twitter @todayshow.

September 11, 2009
Face in Symbol Technology is Here!

Along with the launch of our massive array of Soul Train videos, we’re proud to announce the addition of Face in Symbol Technology at JibJab! What does this mean for you? Right now it means afros! With each Soul Train video you have the ability to affix an afro to your head like Jamie, pictured below. He was just one of the many ingenious folks on our team who helped us pioneer the technological feat of fro that you see on the site today. We’re going to be using this ability in a LOT of new and interesting ways over the next year, just wait until you see what our artists have in store for Halloween!

September 9, 2009
Soul Train Facebook Contest

In celebration of the release of Soul Train Starring You videos on JibJab, we’re hosting a Facebook “like-off”!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Official Rules: Post your Soul Train dance to your Facebook wall and rally your friends to press the “like” button underneath it. Post a screen shot of your video’s “likes” to the official JibJab Facebook wall (www.facebook.com/jibjab) by September 21^st. The top ten videos with the most “likes” will win free year long JibJab memberships. One grand prize winner will receive loads of JibJab stuff, including our books, a JibJab DVD, two t-shirts, a signed “This Land” CD, “He’s Barack Obama” mug and a JibJab hat!

September 8, 2009
Intern Appreciation

As the summer winds down, our amazing squad of summer interns are going their separate ways, back to schools that are located far too far away from JibJab for our tastes. While we get over our empty nest syndrome, we saw off our summer staffers with framed personalized certificates. Thanks for the incredible work guys! Our hope is that these hang high in your homes, reminding you to visit us often! We get lonely!

September 4, 2009
The Board

When you’re sharing working quarters with some of the most brilliant technical and artistic minds ever, everyone has a wish list for what they would like to see the site’s technology do. That’s where the fine folks of JibJab’s product department comes in. They collect and organize every request from employees and users into a massive bulletin board that takes a concept from idea stage, to upcoming on the roadmap, through the collection of specifications, past a ready for development phase, into development and finally declaring the update released onto the site! As you can see, there is something always in motion, making it’s way from the “idea” side of the board to the “released” side of the board. We can’t show you our list of ideas, but you can see our massive stock pile of completed release cards! It’s beautiful to look at isn’t it?

September 3, 2009
Enlightening Us On Lighting

Between key light placement, aperture setting and shadow reduction, lighting a scene doesn’t come easy. That’s why we held a workshop last week on lighting objects, one of the trickiest daily tasks we have at JibJab. It was well attended, so we no longer have an excuse for anything poorly lit. Except for this picture, which could have used a bounce, a flood light, some white balance… you get the idea.

September 2, 2009
Yep, We’re Thinking About Christmas

As raging wildfires burn 40 miles from us and Los Angeles sees triple digit temperatures, we’re thinking cool thoughts. Here’s some BG art we’ve been working on for the holiday season.

September 1, 2009
Something Big is Coming to JibJab…

Something big is taking over our site next week. Big and fluffy. Stay tuned.

August 31, 2009
Experimental Jabbery

In keeping with our weekly goal to further ourselves by sharing tips, tricks and skills with each other, we recently had an in-studio workshop where our very own Maureen put her degree to use and taught us everything she knew about handmade film. After showing the class some examples of other artists at work in the medium, Maureen handed out clear and black film strips, which we all scribbled and scratched on for a short period of time. A few slices of tape later, may we present our experimental film…. Eggroll 118!

August 28, 2009
Insert Inserts Here

There’s nothing we value more at JibJab than outside-the-monitor thinking. That’s why Gregg, our co-founder, was so excited to see a collection of magazine subscription inserts spread out across our product manager’s desk this morning. Johan has been working on ways to better communicate the value of a JibJab Membership at checkout and rather than just look at online examples, he took a broader perspective to see what he could learn from other forms of media. Another reason why you’re the bomb, Johan!

August 27, 2009
Caramel Apple Wagon!

The Wagon Wednesday tradition continues. While usually filled with candy, sometimes margaritas or ice cream sundaes take us by surprise. Today was another show stopper as Amia rolled in with fresh apples, homemade caramel dips and tons of toppings for caramel apples! Between the krispies, peanuts, marshmallows, chocolate candies and honey of today’s Wagon Wednesday we’re going to have to instill Diet Thursday pretty soon. Some dipped their apples classic style, others sliced and dolloped toppings, but both methods lead to sticky goodness!

August 26, 2009
The Worst Person to Send a Striptease to…

It seems once a week we find a really funny story having to do with how people are using our Starring You technology to make others laugh. Last week, someone used our Chippendales dance to lampoon Taiwanese government officials, scoring well over a hundred thousand views! This week another ridiculous story has come out of the woodwork as Steve Lundy, a radio jockey over at Nebraska’s KXKT 103.7, accidentally sent a JibJab striptease to someone he really wished he hadn’t… his pastor! Click the image below to hear the audio excerpt from their morning show to hear how Steve blessed his pastor with such a sultry JibJab.

August 25, 2009
Men in Makeup

Gregg and Evan were on Fox Business News this past Saturday for something a little different than the average interview fare… a full hour of discussion on running a small business and taking e-mails and calls live on air. Now normally (sitting around in front of computers all day) we hardly need to shave or wear more than a t-shirt, but when an hour of live TV is on the schedule, that means button downs and… makeup!

Check out the opening 10 minutes of the sit down over on FoxBusiness.com!

August 24, 2009
Sun, Sand, Sandwiches!

The JibJab studio is a mere two blocks from the beach, so we love popping over to the shore and eating by the sea on our lunch breaks. Usually we get so busy here that we don’t the chance to beach it up as often as we’d like, so today we had a little company picnic to try and get some sunshine to the team. Even so, only half the team could make it out, as the tech team had to bite the bullet and stay inside as they crank away at future Facebook goodies for the site. No worries though, they still got delicious subs and they’ll likely get their fill of sun tomorrow, as we’re all headed to the Dodger/Cubs game!

Ridiculously delicious subs provided by the world famous Bay Cities Deli of Santa Monica.

August 21, 2009