Phil Vischer

Biography: Phil's job: As Chief Executive Officer, Phil Vischer oversees the entire Big Idea team. As Chief Creative Officer, Phil writes many of the VeggieTales� stories and songs, and voices more than a dozen characters, including Bob the Tomato. Phil first started developing ideas for a new kid's show as a computer animator back in 1991. He had little money, zero connections and only one computer. But he knew that he wanted to create media that would help kids to be more thankful and kind, not more sarcastic and disrespectful -- films that would make a parent's job easier, not harder. Working out of a spare bedroom, Phil started out with some money he borrowed from friends and family, a lot of prayers and a big idea. Given his limited resources, Phil decided the characters for his show had to be extremely simple: no arms, no legs, no hair and no clothes. And what exactly did Phil want to accomplish with these bald, limbless vegetables? This question is best answered in the Big Idea mission: "To markedly enhance the moral and spiritual fabric of our society through creative media." In December of 1993, Phil's three-person team completed Where's God When I'm S-Scared?, the first episode of America's first 3D computer-animated video series. Today, more than 200 people are working on a broad mix of creative projects, ranging from direct-to-video films to Big Idea's first theatrical feature film to books, music and a live touring stage production. The "big idea" keeps getting bigger! About BigIdea: Big Idea is a family media company located in Franklin, Tennessee. Known for the computer-animated VeggieTales children's video series, Big Idea is branching out to new and exciting media. Where They Came From Big Idea was founded in a spare bedroom by computer animator and writer Phil Vischer in July of 1993. With one computer, little money and no connections, Phil set out with the goal of creating faimily values-based family media products. Working with two young art school grads and some friends volunteering on weekends, Phil completed the first half-hour episode of VeggieTales, Where's God When I'm S-Scared? in Christmas, 1993. It was the nation's first entirely computer animated video! After selling 130,000 videos through 1995, word-of-mouth began. By the end of 1996, 750,000 videos had been sold. With friends telling friends about the video series, "Veggie-mania" really exploded! Big Idea shipped its one millionth VeggieTales video in March of '97, then passed the 2 million mark in November of that year, and the 3 million mark in March of '98, making VeggieTales one of the most popular children's video series in the world. By the year 2001, the company had sold more than 20 million videos. Following its success at Christian retail stores, the first two VeggieTales titles were released to larger market stores like Target, Wal-Mart and K-Mart in March 1998 ... and all other titles have followed in the months since then! In recent years, they've expanded to the DVD market with re-releases of all their titles, each of which is loaded with lots of bonus features. No matter where you shop, Big Idea continues to reahch kids, and teach them valuable lessons. And it's not just talking vegetables! Big Idea has also produced the "3-2-1 Penguins!" computer generaited, and "Larryboy" animated, direct-to-video series. On October 4, 2002, Big Idea premiered its very first big-screen theatrical film, Jonah - a VeggieTales Movie! Fans from all over the country packed into their local theaters for the biggest fish-story ever told by singing and talking vegetables, and made Jonah one of the most successful family films of the year. Now located in Franklin, Tennessee, Big Idea is continuing to tell fun stories that improve the lives of families. While the world's most famous tomato and cucumber will always be on our banner, Big Idea also plans to expand what they're doing in film, music, publishing, and more! The future is looking good for the baby media company that only a few short years ago, consisted of one guy in a spare bedroom with almost nothing but a big idea.… Expand