At Big Idea Productions' headquarters in Lombard, Illinois, there's much more to see than just vegetables. Many hard-working men and women write, animate, produce and perform in the videos, books, web sites and other creative content. Many others support the company's infrastructure. It is their talents and dedication that have made VeggieTales the phenomenon that it is.

Today, Big Idea employs nearly 200 people in much more than the animation studio: there's also print design, Internet / interactive, consumer products, marketing, customer service, information technology, human resources, finance and operations departments.

Phil Vischer founded GRAFx Studios 1989. The twenty-something aspiring animator is from Muscatine, Iowa, and attended St. Paul Bible College in Minnesota. There, he soon became involved in puppet ministry. He met Mike Nawrocki, and the first puppet scripts the two put together laid the creative foundation from which VeggieTales would one day spring.

One of the series' original creators, Mike Nawrocki performs voices such as Larry the Cucumber and Jerry Gourd. He also writes "Silly Songs with Larry."

Nawrocki later enrolled at the University of Illinois, and joined Vischer at GRAFx. Mike helped to finance his education (with the intention of going into medicine) by taking a job with Renaissance Video - a video production facility. Here he gained experience in production and animation.

Vischer and Nawrocki began working on a new project: an animated children's series that taught biblical values. After dropping his future medical career, Nawrocki joined Vischer full-time at GRAFx Studios in 1992. The two continued to develop their idea of an animated video series. That year, the two produced a two minute promotional video for a new children's series, animated completely on computer. VeggieTales was born.

In 1994, Nawrocki left Film & Tape Works (a company that had purchased GRAFx Studios) and his future in medicine to join Vischer at Big Idea Productions.

Big Idea is based in Lombard, Illinois - a suburb west of Chicago. The company used SoftImage animation software (the same $30,000 program used to animate movies such as "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life," and for special effects in "Jurassic Park," "The Mask" and other hits) to animate the first twelve episodes of VeggieTales. In 1999, Big Idea switched to Maya software - now the industry leader, and the package used to create the ground-breaking special effects in "Star Wars: Episode 1." Big Idea uses Silicon Graphics workstations, and is now the largest computer animation studio in the Midwest.

Kurt Heinecke writes and performs most of the show's original music

VeggieTales was the first full-length, 3D animated video series to be produced in the United States - beating even "Toy Story," the first computer animated full-length feature film. To date, the multi-platinum selling series has won multiple Covenant awards (Where's God When I'm S-Scared? and Rack, Shack & Benny), Dove awards (for "A Very Veggie Christmas" and A Very Silly Sing-Along!), and many others.

The company was founded with the goal of creating quality entertainment that could rival anything Hollywood could produce, but with a biblical worldview. The company's mission statement? "To markedly enhance the moral and spiritual fabric of society through creative media." Big Idea's 20-year goal is to become one of the top five family media brands in the country (rivaling Disney, Time Warner and other giants), and the most trusted of the family media brands.

The company's future projects will soon move beyond Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, exploring characters with limbs, as well as a full-length feature movie. Vischer and his company are driven by the goal not of simply making money, but making people's lives better through creative storytelling.

Don't miss Big Idea's web site, at BigIdea.com!

Other articles on Big Idea:
Two Vegetables with Big Ideas! (Computing Today)
These Guys Produce (New Man's Magazine)