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We continue our deep-dive into the production of Jibjab's new Netflix series "Ask the Storybots."

The post VIDEOS: Exclusive Behind-The-Scenes Look At Stop Motion and CG Animation in ‘Ask the Storybots’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

We continue our deep-dive into the production of Jibjab's new Netflix series "Ask the Storybots."

The post VIDEOS: Exclusive Behind-The-Scenes Look At The 2D Animation and Puppets in ‘Ask the Storybots’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Jibjab has never been a conventional animation company—and that's how they like it.

The post How Jibjab Broke All The Rules For Its First Series, ‘Ask the Storybots’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

This new children's series from Jibjab mixes drawn animation, CG, stop motion, and live-action.

The post Netflix Announces ‘Ask the Storybots,’ An Original Series from Jibjab appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Discover the art of Romney Caswell, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day.

The post Artist of the Day: Romney Caswell appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Tensions build to an explosive breaking point for a group of automobile drivers in Nate Theis' satirical new short "Driving."

The opening night screening is free and open to the public.

Venice, California-based animation and digital media studio JibJab has delivered another winning year-in-review short.

JibJab has completed the series of ABC videos that is part of their new children’s learning project StoryBots. The last video in the series—Z, of course—was directed by Max Winston, whose mastery of classic cartoon timing and movement is second to none among stop motion animators. [UPDATE: Max has posted behind-the-scenes photos from the short on his blog.]

When I was in LA last month, JibJab co-founder Evan Spiridellis gave me a sneak peek of the StoryBots material they’re producing. The StoryBots website doesn’t give much away, but some bits and pieces of concept art can be seen on their Tumblr. The company is busy producing a significant amount of interactive storybooks, games and animated shorts to support the StoryBots iPad app. Beginning this Spring, the app will be available for a flat monthly subscription fee of $4.99.

The thing that strikes me most about the whole StoryBots endeavor is the consistency of quality. JibJab uses a large crew—both in-house and freelancers around the globe—to create its StoryBots content. Working with such a large group of people has the potential to yield a mixed bag of results—for example, see the TED-Ed animated videos.

In JibJab’s case, however, there is a remarkable through-line that stretches across the entire StoryBots universe. This doesn’t mean that every StoryBots piece will wind up as a classic piece of children’s entertainment, but like the early Sesame Street, there is a sensibility of fun and creativity that binds the various parts of StoryBots together.

It’s the type of result that can’t be achieved overnight. Evan, who is the de facto creative director of StoryBots (I’m not sure what title he actually uses), does an incredible job of mixing and matching creative talents, casting the right crew for each segment, and then letting each person do what they’re best at doing. He credits the large amount of content they create for their e-cards division, which remains JibJab’s bread and butter, as preparing him for the demands of putting together StoryBots. At this early stage, the hard work is paying off, and StoryBots could become one of those rare children’s educational products that appeals to children and parents alike.

Brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, founders of JibJab, were visiting New York yesterday to officially launch their new multi-platform children’s project StoryBots. I met them in the afternoon at Rue 57 near Central Park to learn more about their plans for this new venture.

JibJab has evolved constantly since it was founded in a Brooklyn garage in 1999. In the beginning, JibJab was known for its goofy online Flash videos like Founding Fathers. The company gained widespread notoriety in 2004 with its election-themed short This Land, and soon became known for its “Year in Review” animated shorts. In 2007, the company pursued a new business model: e-greeting cards with the innovative “Starring You” technology that allowed people to insert themselves into animated cards. Today, the company specializes primarily in e-greeting cards and has over 40 employees in Venice Beach, California.

Now, with StoryBots, JibJab is expanding in a bold new direction: children’s entertainment. It’s also their biggest push ever into creating original content. Their vision for StoryBots is to build a “Sesame Street for a connected generation.” Using a cast of colorful, simply designed characters that they call StoryBots, JibJab envisions building “hundreds of products in the coming years” that are designed from the ground-up for mobile and tablet devices. These will include apps, ebooks, games, and videos. Educational content and personaliziation will be a key component of many of these products.

StoryBots could pose a major challenge to old children’s media institutions like Disney and Nickelodeon. Instead of doing what other content producers have done in the past, which is to sell a show to a network, JibJab is redefining what children’s entertainment can be in the 21st century and attempting to fundamentally reshape the long-established distribution models of children’s entertainment. Their savviness with monetizing Web content over the past decade leads one to believe that they may actually be able to pull off their ambitious goals.

The initial StoryBots launch includes five separate products:

StoryBots Starring You StoryBooks: A free iPad app that enables parents to create personalized, animated eBooks that include their child’s name and face in the stories.

StoryBots Starring You Band: A free video series on the web that allows parents to insert their kids directly into music videos and jam out alongside the StoryBots.

The StoryBots ABC Jamboree: A collection of 26 one-minute, foot-tapping music videos designed to help kids recognize the sounds and shapes of the letters of the alphabet.

The StoryBots Activity Center: A place on StoryBots.com where parents can download and print over 100 free coloring, tracing, mazes and word finds to – ironically enough – help get their kids off of the computer and back to the kitchen table with crayons and pencils.

The StoryBots Beep & Boop iPhone app: Turns learning good behavior into a game kids love, bringing old-school reward chart systems into the 21st century. Parents give kids BEEPs for good behavior and BOOPs as reprimands. Parents can use the app to create goals and prizes to motivate and celebrate their children’s achievements.

Much of what the Spiridellis brothers have planned for StoryBots can’t be announced publicly yet, but I can say that their plans are impressive. The ABC Jamboree is an excellent example of what makes StoryBots such a unique endeavor.

JibJab is hiring talented animators from around the world to create content for StoryBots, and giving them freedom to animate the StoryBots characters in their own styles. The end result is animation that is not only educational, but also fun to watch for all ages. Just a few of the artists and studios involved with StoryBots so far include Alla Kinda (Spain), Rubber House (Australia), Animade (UK), Chris Garbutt, and Estudio Ronda (Argentina).

Here are two of the ABC vids by Max Winston (letter L) and Nate Theis (letter N):

There’s also a StoryBots Tumblr with behind-the-scenes artwork from the various StoryBots projects being developed.

2011, Buh-Bye! (by JibJab)

JibJab’s annual year-in-review video this year cleverly ditches any technical wizardry in favour of some innovative paper puppetry. Nice work!

Publishing isn’t dying, it’s just becoming more animated. Los Angeles-based JibJab sees an opportunity to benefit from the emergence of digital children’s books on tablets like the iPad. They recently launched a new product line called JibJab Jr. Books. Powered by their “Starring You” technology, it allows kids to insert themselves into their storybooks. The app is free to download on the iTunes store, and comes with a starter book. Additional titles can be purchased for $7.99 individually or $3.99 as part of a monthly subscription plan.

This USA Today article discusses JibJab’s new strategy for children’s books, while this app review on Pad Gadget offers a pretty good overview of how JibJab Jr. works.

The JibJab titles don’t offer the hyper-clickable interactivity or audio narration/sound effects of other recent iPad children’s book efforts like Bill Joyce’s The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, but they have an equally compelling feature in content personalization. Right now, that’s enough to stand out from the pack, although they’ll likely need to add interactivity and sound at some point to stay competitive. Another unique aspect of the books is that JibJab is commissioning a lot of fresh voices, including many from the animation industry, to illustrate their book titles. Among the artists they’ve enlisted so far are Nate Wragg, John Martz, Brigette Barrager and Kai Wu.

(Disclosure: JibJab is a sponsor of Cartoon Brew’s 2011 Student Animation Festival.)

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Brigette Barrager, iPad, jibjab, John Martz, Kai Wu, Nate Wragg

Cold Hard Flash brings news of a legal case that JibJab is pursuing against Toyota over this spot:

Click the following link to download a PDF of the complaint for damages to the California District Courts. JibJab is holding Toyota responsible for the ad, instead of Hoffman Lewis, the ad agency that produced the spot. The website TubeFilter summarized the document’s complaints:

1. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. “…intentionally, knowingly and wilfully copied the JibJab Works in order to personally benefit from the widespread customer recognition and acceptance of said works and to capitalize upon the market created by these works.”
2. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. made “unauthorized use of the JibJab Logo in interstate commerce and advertising…”
3. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.’s “use of the JibJab Logo in its commercials is likely to confuse, mislead, or deceive consumers, the public, and trade as to the origin, source, sponsorship, or affiliation of said products, and is intended, and is likely to cause such parties to believe in error that [Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.]’s products have been authorized, sponsored, approved, endorsed or licensed by JibJab…”
4. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. “intended to capitalize on [JiBJab]’s goodwill associated therewith for [its] own pecuniary gain.”

It should be noted that the offending spot is actually a visual mash-up of two different JibJab productions—the cut-out style animation of Founding Father’s Rap and the Starring You Tap Dance in which users can insert different heads on top of a live-action actor.

Personally, as unoriginal as I find the ad agency’s use of these techniques, copying someone’s graphic style—especially ones like these that aren’t exclusive to JibJab—would be a dubious case. However, Hoffman Lewis made the fatal mistake of also copying JibJab’s well-established animated trademark (the heads of the brothers who say “Jib” and “Jab”). In my eyes, that changes the dynamic of the entire commercial because it signals a clear intent on Toyota’s part to deceive viewers into thinking that JibJab created the spot.

Obviously, let me say that I’m no lawyer, but I have served as an expert witness for major corporations in similar infringement cases. Often times, the “this company stole my idea” claim is frivolous, especially when it’s coming from an amateur artist or writer with no industry experience or understanding of how the business works. In this instance though, I feel that JibJab has a legitimate concern. Judges seem to agree so far too: Toyota has twice requested a judge to dismiss the suit, and both times the judge has nixed Toyota’s motion.

It’ll be interesting to watch how this case plays out through the legal system and who ends up on top. Perhaps it’ll also serve as a wake-up call to all the ad agencies who freely take their ideas from existing animated films produced by independent filmmakers and small companies that lack JibJab’s resources to defend themselves.

(Disclosure: JibJab is a sponsor of Cartoon Brew’s 2011 Student Animation Festival. I learned about this case though by reading about it on Cold Hard Flash.)

JibJab’s latest year in review is my favourite yet, due mostly in part to the aesthetic spin they’ve put on their famous collage-style animation. The illustrative, slightly photocopied-and-cut-out look is gorgeous.