Phil Vischer is a pretty inspiring guy and anyone who dreams of being the next Jim Henson or Walt Disney can learn a lot from him and his experiences.

Phil founded Big Idea Productions in 1993 with the motto “Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun” and the idea that he would teach the Christian bible and moral ideas to children through a bunch of crazy, singing vegetables. Phil’s “big idea” ended up succeeding beyond his wildest dreams; Big Idea’s first project – Where’s God When I’m S-Scared? (the first widely distributed 3D animated movie – released two years before Pixar’s Toy Story) – launched the insanely popular Veggietales series and transformed the face of Christian entertainment.

Big Idea shone brightly as a Christian media superstar in the 1990s, but ultimately ended up in bankruptcy in 2003 after a series of financial missteps. It was a wild personal and spiritual ride for Phil, who went from being an independent Christian filmmaker working out of his spare bedroom to the head of a multi-million dollar animation studio to bankrupt entrepreneur in the span of about a decade. Phil relates the story of the rise and fall of Big Idea in a wonderfully frank, brutally honest article on his web site called What Happened To Big Idea?

Like a surprising number of animation people, Phil started out in puppetry, working in Christian puppet ministry. Since the bankruptcy of Big Idea he’s gone back to his puppetry roots and his new company Jellyfish produces the semi-regular podcast Jelly News that’s mentioned here frequently and last year he was rumored to have some other puppetry-related projects in the works.

Naturally, Phil has great insight into the Christian entertainment market and he’s recently wrapped up a series of posts on his blog about the past and present realities of the Christian video market and the possibilities for the future:

• So you want to make your own Christian videos?
• So you want to make Christian videos, part 2
• So you want to make Christian videos, part 3

These are written with would-be producers of Christian media in mind, but the trends Phil discusses apply to just about every other type of niche-related video content out there too.

Finally, as if the man wasn’t already prolific enough, Phil has just published a book about his life and his spiritual journey called Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About God, Dreams, and Talking Vegetables. So far the reviews have been good with more than one reviewer noting that much like the format of a Veggietale video, the book is unapologetically Christian, but not explicitly scriptural until the very end. I haven’t read it yet myself, but I’m looking forward to it.