Friends and "Family"

Here at Yo Gabba Gabba, we really do get by "with a little help from our friends". With that said, I'm so glad to announce that the Yo Gabba Gabba "Family" episode is finally available! "Family" is one of my favorites of Season 2. I love this one for many reasons, but particularly as a character designer, I've been anticipating this one for a while because it introduces some new characters to Gabbaland. Muno's Mom, Muno's Dad, his sister Chibo (♥♥♥) and his baby brother Gogo.

Now this is where the friends part comes in. The script called for Muno's Mom to have a purse. The purse has to be functional, fashionable and it also has to magically be able hold items that are larger than itself (like Mary Poppins' carpet bag). The size has to be customized to fit Muno's mom because Gabbaland cyclopses are a bit bigger that normal humans. I happen to have a little bit of background in the accessory world, and I knew that for a cool mom like Muno's, this purse can't just be a prop. So I knew the right person to call...The marvelous, mysterious, mad, mad, mister meaner herself, MISSY BROOME.



I worked alongside Missy many years ago, back in the glory days of Paul Frank Industries. Sidenote: Anybody remember the J & MISSY Cat bag? That's a good example of my art + Missy's pursiness. Anyways, Missy is amazing. She's also worked for Roxy, teaches design at OCC and she's the creator of the world famous HOWDY.

So I called Missy up with our little design project, and instantly she was on it. She whipped up 3 amazing concepts and once we settled on one, she nailed it and quickly shipped it over to us. I was surprised to find that for production purposes, she fashioned two versions. One was normal and the other had a velcro trap-door bottom to solve our "Mary Poppins" issue. Brilliant! The craftsmissyship was impeccable.


She even lined the bags with this far-out polka dot print! Not necessary for a "prop" but this was no prop, this was a cyclops woman's vital fashion accessory! In this shot, Muno's Mom is pulling out all of the items necessary to make lemonade.



Like I said, we really do get by with a little help from our friends. Missy did all of this for us out of the kindness of her (Joan-Jetty-black) heart, asking nothing from us in return. She is just one example of the many dear friends that help us bring this silly little magic show together. We are so thankful for all of them. We love you!

More Missy Broome links:
http://missybroome.com/
http://www.myspace.com/missybroome
http://www.myspace.com/howdymonster

Listen...

Hey, another great Season One Jingle is up on YoGabbaGabba.com: the animated music video "Listen" - animated by the crazily talented Lori D., from a song by the band Paco (a side project of the husband and wife that make up two-thirds of the band Ivy.)


The song, and the animation, are a perfect reminder of how important it is - and how much fun it can be - to stop and listen to the things all around us.

And noone knows that better than Lori D. herself! Here's what she told us about how she made the animation:

"I was living on a pistachio farm when I made the "Listen" animation. I started working on this animation during the early summer. As I was developing the treatment for the animation, I had a helpful listening experience. One day, in the late afternoon, I started hearing something knocking on the roof above me... Like someone knocking on a door. I couldn't figure out what was making that sound! It was happening every day for weeks. Then one day I noticed there were lots of pistachio shells scattered on the ground around the front porch and I realized the birds were picking pistachios out of the orchard and taking them up to the roof of the house to peck them open! That was what the knocking sound was....and then the shells would just roll off the edge of the roof onto the ground.

I thought about how that gave me a whole new level of understanding of how listening was a tool I hadn't thought of before that enables a person to intimately get to know the subtle seasonal indicators in the place that they live. I found out by listening that if I hear a bird pecking pistachio shells open on a roof, I can learn from the birds that the pistachios are getting ripe enough to start eating! I thought it was exciting that even though I don't speak bird language, the birds could tell me it was pistachio chowdown showdown time, even if I hadn't been out there in the orchard to see for myself.

That was a big part of what gave me the idea to create ribbons of visualized sound pattern and then follow them to eventually reveal the source of the mystery."

Here's some of the early artwork Lori D. started with when she was making the animation:

Man, that station wagon is so cool!

More from Lori D.:

"I was really excited to create an animation to accompany the "Listen" song. I loved the song and the idea of celebrating the importance and pleasure of actively listening to our world and the people who are in our lives. I had been thinking a lot about how our imaginations ignite when we listen. If there are sounds that we recognize, we use our memories to paint pictures in our minds of what would be making that sound. If we do not recognize the sound, our imaginations piece together wild patchwork quilts of possibilities based on the things that we do know about the world from our experience in it.

So for the fantastic new people of the world, such as are many of the fans of Yo Gabba Gabba, I was thrilled to make an animation that explored the bounty of possibilities for learning about the way things work through listening."

The "Listen" jingle, from Season One.
CLICK HERE to watch - and listen... (Shhh)

Big and Small

Now playing on YoGabbaGabba.com: a great animated Jingle from Season One, "Some Things Are Big, Some Things Are Small" - with music by Jason Falkner, and animation by Christopher Palazzo. It's super pretty, and the song is super hummable and fun to sing along to- for big mouths and small mouths, too.

And the animation and characters are so rad! Here's what Christopher said about designing them.

"The idea is to create as many smiles as possible. The track had a nice feeling to it... like a three minute hug... and I wanted the animation to feel the same way. Big guys helping little guys, little guys showing big guys the cool tricks they can do, etc. It's about being friends with people no matter what they look like."

CLICK HERE to go to Christopher's site and read more about his process, and to see a SMALL video Chris made of the black and white storyboards (aka the "animatic"):

Then, you can watch the very, very BIG finished animated Jingle on YoGabbaGabba.com!

[But just to give you a heads up: If you think that all things are big, or that no things are small... boy, are you in for a surprise.]

Super Soapy Pal!

Just recently, Nickelodeon FINALLY aired the "Clean" episode of of Yo Gabba Gabba! "Clean" also introduced a new character, Super Soapy Pal. Super Soapy Pal is a flying bar of soap that is Yo Gabba Gabba's official spokesperson for hygiene (you know, like washing your hands?) His mortal enemies are germs! Not these Germs...
But these germs!!
"We are the tiny ugly germs, and we'll make you sick!" But I digress...

Below is my first colored sketch of Mr. Super Soapy. As you can see, it's super sketchy...

So after everybody dug the sketch, I took it to my computer and built this "cleaner" version (wocka wocka) in Adobe Illustrator. Learning that Super Soapy Pal was going to be flying in front a blue screen, I rendered him in more of a minty hue.

After the cleaner, soapy sketch is OK'd, we turn this art over to our puppet masters, and Super Soapy Pal quickly comes to life!


Here we have Animation Producer Kevin Lee, Animation Wizard Joel Fox and a flying tattooed arm, demonstrating Super Soapy Pal's shoulder resting capabilities.

Super Soapy Pal is here to inspire hope in the hearts of parents and children everywhere. Hope for a cleaner, brighter future.
So what if they've switched to an anti-bacterial liquid soap.