New washout booth!
One corner of the gallery space.

Equipment.

Dark Room.

Last week, the Yo Gabba Gabba crew was invited to a taping of The Soup (a very hilarious clip show on E! - previously known as Talk Soup). They often poke fun at YGG and wanted to have Brobee and Seth (the most awesome kid dancer on the show) appear on their Best of 2007 year-end special.
The Soup is one of my favorite shows so naturally I was borderline-insane over being there... here are some photos:

The view when I drove into the parking structure – scary!


Parker enjoys the décor in E!’s waiting room – is that giant Ryan Seacrest not the most sickening thing? I want it so bad.


Brobee is on the scene


Scott goes through the script with Amos, the voice actor behind Brobee, in the Soup’s green room.


Amos and Tara – the two parts that make a whole Brobee


Christian and Seth being awesome


They gave us Sprinkles cupcakes! Fancy, fancy.


Seth shows off how cool he is


Then Joel came in and I got really nervous – hence the crummy picture


Executive producer Ed Boyd poses with Brobee in the limited edition Kid Robot hoodie Scott brought for him








I told Joel I liked his shoes so he posed like this for about 3 minutes





I actually expected the set to be smaller – but it was still quite intimate


Rehearsing


Group photos during the break – here’s the YGG crew representing awesometown, as usual


Joel McHale: host of my dreams


Seth was very fun and eerily professional




During the taping, I met Kelly Andrews, one of the producers/cast members.


She was such a sweetheart! …not to mention adorable.


Here is a video of the informal rehearsal with Brobee and Seth for the segment that aired last Friday.






The second half of the Soup's Best of 2007 special airs this coming Friday. Check it out!

Here's Curtis recording Victor for an upcoming project. Victor.."The Maaaan of Threeeeeeeeeeeeee Voices."

It's amazing how much better finding an interesting natural voice can be than someone doing a "cartoon voice."

One of the many benefits.

Here's what the studio looks like with no one in it (except Mike Owens..and me). Hush.


Close up on Mike Owens. Shhhhhhhhh.

I kind of figured that I'd post a heck of a lot less about YGG...but Yo Gabba Gabba is featured as one of the "Top Ten new TV shows" in Time Magazine!

Nifty.

A boy battling our Ben 10: Hero Matrix drawings.

Last Saturday was the PUNY Holiday Bash at Shad's house. I must say I didn't think anything could top the amount of fun we had at the BTA Bash part 1 last year, or BTA Bash part 2 but as usual I was proven wrong.

Once again Shad and Anna and set the stage for a wonderful evening.



All of my favorite people were there.


Matt (he's new)


Mitch


Zander


Shad


Ashley (she's new)


Amanda


Victor and Erin


Yui


Curtis and Valorie


Anna and Sumra, with Shad in there too.



And all my favorite crustaceans as well.





There were a ton of other people too, but they either weren't photographed, or insisted on only posing for blurry pictures.

Our old friend Scott Bibus stopped by with Rock Band, so we moved the party to the basement were true parties belong.




We made a music video for our hit single "Don't Fear the Puny" (clean version)


Afterwards we sang Christmas carols around the piano with the help of a violin, three guitars, a banjo and a xylophone, and we made Mitch dance in front of people. That's what I call a PARTY!

It's hard to avoid those guys at Aesthetic Apparatus what with all of their gallery shows, lectures, and magazine interviews and all of those rock posters hanging around. If you ARE trying to avoid them, take a short break and check out their new "Doom Drips" series of prints. There is something for everyone in this series and a print for every couch. The sweetest part is most of these prints are limited to 100 and priced at an insanely cheap $20.
The Secret Santa price-point!

http://www.aestheticapparatus.com/products.php?subsection=Doom&fs_page=1

They HOT HOT HOT HOT item here at the studio has been these beautiful paintings by King Mini, we get an amazing shipping discount but if you're looking for an incredible thing to buy for someone (me), don't miss these original paintings in his Esty shop:

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=7402550

Give handmade gifts directly from artists.

Two Amy Jo posts in a row? She deserves it...AND I'm excited about the new design studio/boutique that Amy Jo, Lonny Unitus, and Tooth are opening this Saturday here in Minneapolis. They're also opening an Etsy store on the same day. BUY HANDMADE GIFTS DIRECTLY FROM ARTISTS THIS YEAR!

Toys and Dolls with no lead, beautiful prints that match your furniture, and one of a kind T-Shirts.

Amy Jo Poster Retrospective opens Tonight!

Friday, December 7, 2007
7-10pm

First Amendment
1101 Stinson Boulevard
Northeast Minneapolis

Show runs through February 10, 2008.
www.firstamendmentarts.com

Hope to see you there!

Well, well, well.

What a fine evening it was!

We met a lot of great people last night and hopefully everyone had a great time.

Curtis & Mitch putting together the PUNY holiday tree. More pictures of this to come.

IDGA people and students touring from Western Wisconsin Tech checking out Cory's impressive game selection.

Kevin and Zander come down from Big Time Attic to spend some quality time with Shad.

We had lots of booze!

More to come as pictures roll in~

Take a break from coding and convert those Vulcan ears to elf ears
cuz the International Game Developers Association's Holiday Social is at PUNY this Thursday.

Socialize, network and ring in the season
in a particularly geeky fashion.

See you here at 6PM 'til late
1618 Central Avenue NE Suite 130, Minneapolis MN

Labels: Holiday Party, IDGA, IDGATC, International Game Developers Association, PUNY, Twin Cities

Adage has an article on online with our favorite show:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=122300

"For the marketers looking to associate themselves with these shows across platforms (this season they've included Kellogg, Nintendo and Buena Vista), the key is to be one step ahead of the YouTube linkers. "It takes a little bit of foresight and insight to make sure the brand and teams are asking themselves questions and doing some scenario planning," said Art Sindlinger, VP-activation director at Starcom."

Marketers don't have to be one step ahead of Youtube linkers. If they kept pace, that would be good enough. Instead they are quite a bit behind and attach themselves to memes too late to be effective.

I've been in a lot of board rooms this past year and everyone is building the exact same things. Digital strategy in most corporate towers is relegated to one to six people with very little power and small end-of-the-year overage budgets. I watch a lot more campaigns with very low return on investments than success stories. The success stories usually involve people who created a great Internet content to circumvent strategists and marketers, rather than as a result. Ingenuity being born from no budget necessity, content still very much being king.

Kids aren't becoming technologically savvy. Kids ARE savvy. It's the caretaker's habits and anxieties that set the pace for how quickly kids are online and how much they use it. The ratio between how much time Kids spend online vs television is a very temporary one with fear-based barriers melting by the day. That notion should be intuitive, if it's not..you're already ten years behind.

The online bits that are succeeding are the results of people with that very intuitive understanding of what flies online. They are creating the kind of content that they love. They put something on Youtube because they use Youtube. Marketers like networks need to attach themselves to those people and sponsor that content. Press releases and Adage articles can't reverse the truths that it was no marketer or strategist that turned YGG from a TV series to Internet sensation. It was an
Internet sensation first...and from there got the attention of networks and then advertisers. At that point it's like Columbus calling the queen from a Super 8 Motel in Cleveland and saying he discovered the whole works.

It doesn't do anyone any good to twist it any other way. (unless you're a marketing firm along for the ride and hoping to up your consulting rates)