Client
JibJab is a digital entertainment studio based in Los Angeles, California
Industry
Entertainment, Media
Services
Product Development
Stack
Android, OpenGL, Facebook

Challenge

Let's admit it, greeting cards are really boring. Or, rather, they used to be — right up to the moment the JibJab brothers came up with their ‘insert your face into the eCards’ concept. Though JibJab made their name mainly due to viral political satire, they are top of the line digital fun trailblazers. The studio has been constantly pioneering new media platforms, offering unique content and tools for messaging. JibJab came to us after they had been chosen to showcase an app for Facebook Messenger at the annual Facebook F8 conference. The idea was as simple as it was groundbreaking: let users paste cropped faces on funny GIFs — created for holidays, birthdays, and other occasions — and send them to their mates.

We took on the following challenges:
Develop an Android app within tight deadlines
Pick up the slack and work around the clock to meet the deadline
Work with an experimental platform — a pre-release beta version of the Facebook product
Work with a large collection of animations and the corresponding meta-data, which posed performance and scalability challenges
Deal with compatibility issues since Android devices support different versions of Open Graphics Library (OpenGL)
Consider variations across Android platforms, devices and in built-in camera functionality when developing features such as cropping and positioning the user's face in animations

Solution

An Android app that allows users to easily insert face images into animated eCards, edit and share the resulting GIFs and videos
Performance optimization to ensure the app behaves correctly and as intended across various Android devices, regardless of the quality of built-in cameras, memory issues or other limitations
Animated main grid view — the home screen of the app is a grid view with active animations. As the user scrolls down, every cell — which is a GIF preview of a particular eCard — begins animating
The Snap selfie feature allows users to take a selfie via the app, filling the specific oval space with their faces. Or upload and adjust existing photos: the app offers stickers and GIFs that can be personalized with friends' faces shot on the phone or taken from the photo library
The Face Swap feature allows users to place themselves in available entertaining animated scenes: to play the role of the heroes of viral music videos, classic movies, internet memes, etc.
The Head edit feature allows users to crop photos with more precision. Users can align their pictures with guidelines: an eye-line, a mouth line, as well as select from several oval forms that fit their head shape better
The Jaw cut feature allows animating lip and mouth movements to imitate singing. Users are able to drag the corners of the mouth to shape it into a smile
With Your Head library, users can add as many face photos as they wish. The cast card feature lets users select from available faces in the Card preview mode
Text over - users can additionally add text to an animated GIF
The Share and Download feature allows users to send the resulting eCards via a text message, or as a post on Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, e-mail, or via a link
A user-friendly interface to easily customize eCards and browse them by categories such as birthdays, holidays, valentines, thank-yous, etc.
Support. Our team continued to work with their in-house team which they later expanded. We were involved in supporting the app after its launch
JibJab Entertainment App
Entertainment App Development for JibJab

Impact

The JibJab app allows millions of people to easily share their joy among friends and family in a couple of clicks
Just four weeks after its debut, the app achieved viral growth and scored 100 K downloads, being the easiest and funniest way to personalize best wishes cards for every occasion
The app release at the FB conference marked JibJab public debut in the mobile space, and our dedicated team played a big role in making this happen

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