WE CAN'T WAIT TO START FILMING!

Season 4 is under way which is very exciting, but we just can't wait to start filming!

"Adventure Episode" Design Concepts Part 1

The Adventure Episode; One of my favorites!
Christian's brilliant script called for Muno to discover an underground passage leading to an ancient Mesoamerican-esque temple where he discovers a golden statue resembling an ear of corn. This is no doubt paying homage to our favorite adventure movies of the 80's.

Brandon Minton sent over this early computer sketch to show where we needed to start. We had to build a miniature model as well as a full scale set for the top of the temple.


I started clicking my mouse too and brought to the table the concept below. I heard that DEVO's energy-dome hats were actually inspired by Mayan temples, so I thought it would be fun with art-imitating-life imitating art again and tried a DEVO inspired temple shape.
It didn't really work and we went back to the traditional block shape.




Then I put down the mouse down and picked up the colored pencils. More sloppy = more fun!
The colors here were important to me. I didn't want warm rock colors. I wanted something cool & stony but still Yo Gabba bright. I went for blues, greens and purples; a meager nod to Eyvind Earle's genius castle interiors from one of my favorite movies, Sleeping Beauty.

I felt that bright green moss everywhere would really make the the background pop in certain areas.
I'm often throwing in concept ideas that just don't work budget or script-wise but are fun. Why not have a puppet snake in the background? Oh..yeah, that's why.
Also notice the popcorn motif on the altar. It's a tiny reveal to the forthcoming popcorn payoff at the end of the script.
Later I thought it might be fun if the carved faces in the background were more character specific to the show, so I made them random smiling Goobles instead of generic tiki-hieroglyphs. I confess, I try to sneak Gooble in as much as possible.

The script also called for a pillar or post for Muno to lasso and climb up on, as showed here in Julia Vickerman's storyboard.

So I was asked to design a pillar. BO-RING. I figured if we were going to make our guys sculpt and paint something, it might as well be fun looking, right? I felt it was another oppurtunity to work in some more YGG characters. Naturally, I first thought of another chance to work in Gooble, but maybe too much...

... We are telling the story of an ancient ruin, not my fascination with a crying ghost, so I drew inspiration from these gargoyles representing the great Quetzelcoatl, or "feathered serpent"

I thought that our own little cat-dragon Toodee would pull this look off really well, so there's your pillar design for you.

Also, I had this idea of having the top of the temple to resemble a Pizza Hut. Wouldn't you think that's funny? I guess it was just me. Bryan Anderton pointed out that with Muno being almost 7 feet tall, it would be difficult to even fit that roof into frame. You win some, you lose some.

And now, here's how it turned out! (Click to enlarge)

Hooray for corn!

Fan made Gooble Video

Fun News!! For Fun!!!

• Things are blooming at the studio over here and Season 3 is going to be the BEST EVER!!

• The Yo Gabba Gabba Youtube channel is sharing more videos! Click subscribe and enjoy them weekly!

• Look at this cool picture of Brobee...Doin' sumpin.

More pictures as they develop.

• New Yo Gabba Gabba Clothing is available NOW in secret Target and Kohl's locations across the country. So that leaves the question as to, WHERE??? Help us find out and win prizes at Gabbafriends.com!!!

• We love it when people buy our merchandise, because that's the only thing that keeps us from sudden, instant and immediate death. 


Nevertheless, home made Yo Gabba Gabba goodies are still the coolest ever. Seriously! For example, check out these 3 homemade goodies from Delane Lyn, a Yo Gabba super fan!
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It's Muno's sister Chibo (I♥her), GOOBLE and a little baby named Dexter. OK, so the baby isn't a Yo Gabba Gabba character, but I'm pretty sure he was homemade, so there. You know, something needs to be said about Gooble's growing cult status, especially in the homemade goodies world. Maybe I 'll say something tomorrow.

• You can still catch Brobee and Plex at these Toy's R Us events!!

YO GABBA GABBA TOYS R US GRAND RE-OPENING EVENTS:

6/12-Willow Grove, PA [Brobee]
6/19-Springfield, MO [Plex]
6/19-Virginia Beach, VA [Brobee]
7/3-Carolina, Puerto Rico [Brobee]
7/3-North Haven, CT [Plex]
7/24-Riverside, IL [Brobee]
7/24-Gurnee, IL [Plex]
7/31-Midland, TX [Brobee]
7/31-La Mesa, CA [Plex]
8/14-Pearl, HI [Brobee]
9/4-North Park, TX [Plex]
9/14-Bronx, NY [Brobee]
10/16 Holbrook, NY [Plex]
10/23-Katy, TX [Brobee]

• Please, don't bite your friends.

Goobley Grik

You might remember gabba friend, Grik's work from his customized Yo Gabba Gabba Vans that we posted last year.
Anyhoo, Grik made a super fresh Gooble doll!


To quote The Who, "I waaaaant it, I waaaant it"

Gooble's Origin

As promised, the following is a little background behind Gooble, the ghostlike mysterious Yo Gabba Gabba character.

Artistically, Gooble's origin began with a song off of the Aquabats 1999 "Vs. The Floating Eye of Death" album called, "Monster's Wedding" The song itself is a ghost story; not unlike Tim Burton's 2005 film, The Corpse Bride. In the song, there is a foreboding ghost's voice saying, "you must go". That ghost's name was Obakemon (which translates to "ghost-man" in Japanese).

I did the graphic design for the "Floating Eye of Death" album and I knew that Obakemon would be a real fun character to illustrate for the inside lyric booklet. Of course, he is what he is in the song, a ghost man. I designed him to emulate the style of my brother Christian's signature red cyclopses that he used to doodle all over the place--which eventually became Muno (but that's another story). In promotion of the album, Obakemon later found himself on Aquabats t-shirts, stickers and jackets. They were mostly glow-in-the dark, cuz you know, he's a ghost!

I really dug Obakemon's sad clown look of misery with his candy red lips. I don't know why, but for some reason it visually appealed to me. When I was working at Paul Frank Industries, I had an Obakemon messenger bag custom made for me that I carried around for years and years.

So then, I believe in 2004, Christian & Scott invited me (with a few others) to the first working Yo Gabba Gabba concept meeting. It was then that they pitched the idea of developing a TV project other than The Aquabat Super Show. This was going to be a character based kids show but pulling from what we had already built in the Aquabats universe. I thought it was a great idea to put some of these characters to better use. Muno, Brobee and Gooble are all characters that have Aquabat roots.

We changed Obakemon's name to Gooble because we liked how it sounded. Besides, Obakemon? American kids don't like them Japanese names fer stuff! They like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon and Apple pie stuff like that!

My job as graphic dude was to help flesh out the early concepts for a pitch. This was Gooble #1:



OK so several years later, we end up making the show. We settle on the 5 main characters, because we just didn't have it in the first season budget to make more! Gooble did survive in a couple of scripts as a minor role, but now he had to be animated. This made me sad because I thought he would look really cool as a live action character.

But then my favorite mistake happened. In the process of making one of the Muno costumes, there was an error, and Muno just didn't turn out right. We spent big dollars on this Muno we simply couldn't use. So, I made this proposal: we take the bad Muno costume, scrape off the bumps and remake it in a Gooble fashion.


...And it worked!


Here, in the episode aptly entitled, "Love", Gooble joins the rest of the cast in a touching rendition of, "Be Nice To Everyone". I personally think this is one of the weirdest moments of Yo Gabba Gabba...and I LOVE it!

YGG Frequently Asked Questions

My current FAQ is, "What's the name of the sad, tall, white character on Yo Gabba Gabba?"
Answer: GOOBLE.

Look forward to more insights on this mysterious crybaby ghost right here on the Yo Blogga Blogga!
Until then, catch him with the Salteens at www.yogabbagabba.com