Cave Worms

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Every once in a while at JibJab a few of us get to collaborate on an offbeat little personal project. Cave Worms was one of the recent projects that I made with my good buddy and master puppeteer Mike Chiechi. Our friend Alan Cook filmed and photographed the short and Devin Bell consulted us quite a bit on the fabricating process. It's a rather strange addition to the Jibjab library, but I find it's quirkiness pretty charming. Mike and me describe it as our David Lynch style ecard for JibJab.

Here's the visual development work I made for the project.

I crafted the underground set piece out of Paper Mache and lots and lots of clay and sculpey. I wanted it to feel like an old Peter Gabriel claymation video.

Alan did a nice job lighting this guy as well.

Although that's me holding the puppet for a lighting test, Mike did all the puppeteering. The guy is a puppet wizard!

Here's the miniature cityscape I made. I used X-Mas lights to create the glow of the windows and it really added to the Ed Wood charm of the whole set piece. Again, Alan did a very nice job photographing it.

In all it was a really fun project to work on. Fine work Mike and Alan!

--Justin