JibJabbin’

Greetings JibJabbers!

Every four years, my brother and I are blessed with a political circus so ripe with absurdity that ‘finding the funny’ becomes like shooting fish in a barrel. In 2000, we created the Bush/Gore rap battle. In 2004, we produced This Land. Now, in 2008, we’re pleased to present Time for Some Campaignin’!

Our latest musical romp is a parody of Bob Dylan’s 1960s political anthem, The Times They Are A-Changin’. We thought Dylan’s true call for revolutionary change juxtaposed against the modern political process would be funny. Plus, we just wanted an excuse to use the word “juxtaposed” in our blog.

This video was by far the most difficult election video we have ever produced. When we started, Hillary was still in the race, which meant we couldn’t take the tit-for-tat approach that had worked so well for us in the past. While it was painful at first, creative constraints are always good and having three candidates forced us make something entirely new. The worst thing we could have done is mimicked our past work.

Since my brother and I started JibJab 8 ½ years ago, we have been fascinated by the opportunity the Web offers to create new entertainment experiences. We have found that unlike traditional media, where independent creators are virtually shut out, if you do something new and interesting online, people will find it and share it with their friends.

This year, our desire to do something new manifested itself in our STARRING YOU!® technology. Thanks to our incredible technology team, users can upload photos, cut out heads, and put themselves, family and friends into the latest election video. You can give it a try yourself here: http://Sendables.JibJab.com/

Starring You! is a small part of a much bigger initiative underway here at JibJab called JibJab Sendables®. In a nutshell, we are trying to reinvent eCards. By working with the best storytellers and artists in the world it is our goal to offer something better than the dancing cats and cuddly bunnies you’ll find on most eCard websites.

There are over 1,000 JibJab Sendables eCards in our library in categories ranging from birthdays and anniversaries to flirts, disses and everyday fun. A huge number are free and some are available exclusively to JibJab subscribers. If you like our political videos, you have to check them out!

We would like to thank the millions of people who have supported JibJab over the years (especially the 2+ million members who have signed up to receive our free updates). Without your support emailing our work to your friends, the great experiment that is JibJab would never have made it to this point. We hope you enjoy our latest video and if you like it, pass it along!

Best wishes,

Gregg, Evan & the entire JibJab Team

We knew we wanted to produce a video for the 2008 election but we were terrified of the expectations for our follow up to THIS LAND. Unfortunately, when you are a tiny company, there is no time for fear; you just have to DO IT!

Rather than try to “top” THIS LAND, which we knew would be impossible, our goal was to make the best video humanly possible without repeating ourselves. We didn’t know what the song would be but we knew we didn’t want to just have two candidates calling each other names - been there, done that!

On March 16th Gregg fired off the following email to Evan and the production officially began…

Once we have a direction we officially become slaves to the project…

Once the lyrics and initial visual concepts are fleshed the process opens up beyond the brothers. Evan works with the amazing internal and external artists at JibJab to start really fleshing outing the visual gags and storyboards. There are pages upon pages of drawing that get done at this stage. If you look closely some of these made it into the finished piece. Click an image to enlarge…

We like the bitter guy from Pennsylvania clinging to his gun and religion…

There were a thousand ways to illustrate the “swollen left gland”…

The McCostume had some great gags…

Here’s an alternate take on the opening with Rove pocketing the keys!

Here’s a pass at the final sequence with Hillary still in the running…

Visual Development is where we create a bunch of art, not with the intention of actually putting it in the animation, but rather to get a sense for what the animation should FEEL like. Viz Dev begins at the very beginning of Pre-Production and continues to evolve throughout the making of the piece. Here’s some samples. Click to enlarge..

Hillary’s sequence was a mixture of lamenting what could have been and the aggression that was natural to her campaign…

The McCain sequence was all a cross between WWII poster art and Rambo!

For Obama the goal was clearly a complete and utter fantasy land - to be MORE Disney than Disney…

And it all had to pull together in the end…

With the lyrics nailed down and the storyboards 80% of the way there, we get to do the most fun part of the process: recording! Recording is so great because, unlike animation which takes weeks or months, we start in the morning with nothing and, by the end of the day, we have a polished piece of work.

On Monday, May 12 we were lucky enough to record with the maestro, John Frizzle! As we’d hoped, John crafted an epic track where each verse perfectly mirrored the character’s personality. With the help of Frederik Wiedmann rockin’ the control panels we feel like the music couldn’t have come out better!

Here’s Evan, John, Gregg and Jim once the day’s work was done…

Our MAGNIFICENT voice actors Jim Meskimen and Su Tien Wong! Jim has been our go-to guy for years now and can do just about any voice imaginable. In addition to acting and singing, Su is also a crazy talented animator working up at Pixar this summer…

John has all kinds of crazy equipment at his studio (plus he makes a mean bag of pop corn).  John, Gabriel Mann (the voice of Obama) and Gregg partake of some popped goodness…