Gif Gab
Concept, illustration, and animation for JibJab’s Gif Gab app, creating a library of customizable GIFs built for people to put themselves in the joke.
Blessed with the GIF of Gab
JibJab created Gif Gab as a quick way for people to turn themselves, their friends, and even their pets into personalized animated GIFs. The app needed a constant supply of funny, instantly understandable ideas that could work with almost any face dropped into them, from dancing and workouts to food, animals, holidays, and general weirdness.
I worked with JibJab developing concepts, illustration, and animation for the app’s growing GIF library. Each piece had to be funny on its own but modular enough to accommodate a stranger’s photo without breaking the joke. The ongoing assignment gave me plenty of room to experiment with character, timing, visual gags, and the kind of short-form ideas people actually want to share.
CLIENT
JibJab
STUDIO
Weirdo Works
YEAR
2018
MY ROLE
Concept Development, Illustration, Animation
DELIVERABLES
Customizable GIFs, Character Animation, App Content, Animated Stickers
RESULTS
Ongoing library of personalized animated content for the Gif Gab app
AWARDS
AAF Gold, Online Content, 2019
Best Mobile App Awards Finalist, Best New Mobile App, 2018
A GIF for Almost Anything
The concepts could start almost anywhere. Some were built around familiar characters or activities; others were just visual jokes that made me laugh. The common thread was that the user’s face had to become part of the idea rather than simply being pasted on top of an animation.
Sumo Wrestler
Body Builder
Drinking Coffee
Disco Dancer
Little Monster
Super Plumber Bros.
Morning Cereal
Kangaroo Hop
Dog Poop
Get inspired, and Make Something
GIF Maker and Smile Maker
Personalized animation comes with a strange constraint: you never know whose face is going into the finished piece. A GIF might end up starring a kid, a grandparent, a coworker, a dog, or someone who absolutely should not be wearing a Santa belly-dance costume..
That meant the characters, poses, and jokes had to do most of the heavy lifting. I designed the animations around clear silhouettes, exaggerated movement, and simple visual setups so a new face could be dropped in and immediately feel like part of the scene. The stranger the combination got, the better it usually worked.
Morning Rooster
Dancing Skeleton
Rake Face
Santa Belly Dance
Ride ‘Em Rocking Horse Cowboy
Bouncing Jello Jiggle
Forever Puking
News Anchor
Boxing Bruiser
Funny at Thumb Size
Most of these GIFs had only a few seconds to make sense, so there wasn’t much room for setup. The idea needed to read quickly, the movement needed to exaggerate the joke, and the loop had to land without feeling awkward.
Making them regularly became a useful exercise in editing ideas down to their funniest part. Sometimes that meant an elaborate character setup. Sometimes it was a guy puking forever. Both had to work just as fast.