Sep 28, 2012

JibJab Enters Children's Entertainment with Storybot

Brothers Evan and Greg Spiridellis, founders of JibJab, visited New York City yesterday to officially launch their new multi-platform children's project, StoryBots. We met them this afternoon at Rue 57 near Central Park to hear more about their plans for this new venture.

JibJab has been in constant evolution since it was founded in a Brooklyn garage in 1999. In its early days, JibJab was known for goofy online Flash videos like "Founding Fathers"; in 2004, the company became widely known for its election-themed short "This Land" and eventually for its animated short "Year in Review. In 2007, the company pursued a new business model. In 2007, the company pursued a new business model: e-greeting cards using the innovative "Starring You" technology that allows users to insert themselves into animated cards. Today, the company specializes primarily in e-greeting cards and employs over 40 people in Venice Beach, California.

And now, with StoryBots, JibJab is expanding in a bold new direction: children's entertainment. It is also putting its greatest effort to date into creating original content; StoryBots' vision is to build "Sesame Street for the Connected Generation." Calling the colorful, simply designed characters StoryBots, JibJab envisions creating "hundreds of products over the next few years" designed from the ground up for mobile and tablet devices. This includes apps, e-books, games, videos, and more. Educational content and personalization will be key elements in many of these products.

StoryBots could pose a significant challenge to older children's media like Disney and Nickelodeon. Rather than selling shows to networks as other content creators have done in the past, JibJab is redefining what children's entertainment can be in the 21st century and fundamentally reshaping the long-established distribution model for children's entertainment. Their experience in monetizing web content over the past decade suggests that they may actually be able to achieve that ambitious goal.

StoryBots' initial launch will include five separate products:

StoryBots Starring You StoryBooks: a free iPad app that allows parents to create personalized, animated e-books with their child's name and face in the story. story with their child's name and face in it.

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

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

The StoryBots Activity Center: StoryBots.com offers over 100 free coloring pages, tracing pages, mazes, and word searches to download and print.

The StoryBots Beep & Boop iPhone App: brings the old-fashioned reward chart system into the 21st century, turning learning good behavior into a game that kids love. Parents give BEEP for good behavior and BOOP for reprimands. Parents can use the app to create goals and prizes to motivate their children and celebrate their accomplishments.

While much of what the Spiridellis brothers have planned for StoryBots cannot yet be announced publicly, I can say that their plans are impressive; the ABC Jamboree is an excellent example of what makes StoryBots such a unique endeavor.

JibJab has hired talented animators from around the world to produce StoryBots content, giving them the freedom to animate StoryBots characters in their own unique style. The result is animation that is not only educational, but also enjoyable to watch for all ages. Artists and studios that have participated in StoryBots include Alla Kinda (Spain), Rubber House (Australia), Animade (UK), Chris Garbutt, and Estudio Ronda (Argentina).

Here are two ABC videos by Max Winston (alphabet L) and Nate Theis (alphabet N):

Also, the StoryBots Tumblr features behind-the-scenes artwork from various StoryBots projects in development .