Animation Lab

Animation Lab was founded as part of JVP's vision to apply methods from Israeli software development to animation, producing quality work at lower cost than traditional Hollywood studios.[1] JVP executive Elie Wurtman articulated this approach at launch.[1] The studio was designed for the international family-entertainment market, with planned English-language features for broad audiences as well as video games and mobile-phone animation.[2][3]

The studio's stated strategy was to attract seasoned Hollywood professionals while building capacity among Israeli animators, many of whom were already working internationally.[3] As CEO Max Howard put it, the studio's guiding principle was: "First find the project, and then build the studio in order to produce it."[3] The facility was also conceived as a cornerstone of a larger JVP-led media and technology complex in central Jerusalem, with JVP founder Erel Margalit hoping the cluster would generate creative momentum and encourage urban revitalization in the city center.[4]

JVP established Animation Lab in Jerusalem. At launch, reports described it as a multimillion-dollar studio with plans to employ as many as 175 people when fully operational.[1][2] In 2011, the studio was described as having been founded approximately four years earlier, around 2007, under the banner of Jerusalem Venture Partners Media Labs.[5]

The founding followed an earlier unsuccessful attempt to establish a major Israeli animation studio. Digital Productions Solutions Israel, an IDT subsidiary, opened in Beit Shemesh in 2003 and employed about 160 people, but its US overseers closed it at the end of 2004 before it produced anything noteworthy.[2] Howard contrasted Animation Lab's staged approach with that venture: his studio would begin with a core team of 25 to test its infrastructure and then expand to 125–175 employees for feature production.[2][3]

Erel Margalit cited the studio project as significant enough that in 2006 he withdrew his candidacy to chair the Israel Broadcasting Authority, explaining that he could not disengage from his business involvement in it.[6] He described Animation Lab as a vehicle to attract leading professionals to Israel and establish Jerusalem as a center for digital animation.[6]

The studio's initial leadership included two figures with extensive Hollywood experience. Max Howard, a London-born producer, had held a senior position in Disney Feature Animation for nearly a decade before being recruited in 1995 to head Warner Bros.' new feature-animation department; his credits included Space Jam, The Iron Giant, and Quest for Camelot.[2] Douglas Wood, a writer, former actor, and film producer who had worked on Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures, joined the studio as a screenplay consultant during its launch period.[2]

By 2009, the production of The Wild Bunch had drawn additional Hollywood talent to Jerusalem. Art director Daniel Kaku had previously worked on Shrek and said he was drawn to the project by the screenplay and by the opportunities he saw in Israel.[7] Producer Jim Ballantine praised the studio's multidisciplinary staff—many combining Israeli military-technology experience with Bezalel Academy training—and said their technical skills had enabled a streamlined production pipeline he considered innovative even by Hollywood standards.[4]

Animation Lab's principal project was The Wild Bunch. A 2008 account presented it as potentially the first full-length animated feature made in Israel, while a 2009 report described it as the first Israeli animated feature.[4][7] Set in a meadow, the film follows flowers and other plants banding together to defend their habitat from genetically modified cornstalks seeking to conquer it and impose a society of genetically identical maize.[4] The protagonist was Daisy, a Jerusalem daisy; art director Daniel Kaku said the team had tried more than ten designers before arriving at her final appearance.[7]

The script was written by Philip LaZebnik, whose previous credits included Mulan and Pocahontas.[4] Director Douglas Wood said the team reviewed approximately 200 possible scripts before selecting The Wild Bunch, attracted by what he called "the secret lives of plants"—an angle he found creative and original and distinct from the animal-centered stories that dominated animated features.[4] Voice recording began in Hollywood and featured Willem Dafoe, Elizabeth Hurley, and Willie Nelson; the report said Dafoe had visited the Jerusalem studio during production.[4]

In 2008, 70 artists and engineers were working on the film in Jerusalem, with a planned 2009 release.[4] In 2011, the company was still described as working on The Wild Bunch as its first film, suggesting that the 2009 target had not been met.[5] Producer Jim Ballantine said in 2008 that the studio's broader ambition was to produce six animated features over eight years, with The Wild Bunch as the first of that planned slate.[4]

Animation Lab drew employees from eleven countries, though 80 percent of its staff were Israelis; countries represented included Canada, Argentina, China, Italy, and Israel.[4] Many Israeli employees brought backgrounds in military technology, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design training, or both—a combination that Ballantine credited with enabling the studio's efficient production pipeline.[4]

From the outset, the studio worked with Bezalel on a practical training program for students entering animation. Bezalel lecturer Yossi Abolafia noted that graduates often lacked commercial-market experience and needed hands-on industry exposure before entering the workplace, and the Animation Lab collaboration was presented as one mechanism to address that gap.[1]

Howard also planned to invite Hollywood professionals to Jerusalem to give workshops and help develop local talent.[3] He framed the studio's international orientation explicitly: "The studio has no connection to Israel. It is simply located here."[3] Despite that framing, Howard saw the studio's presence as an opportunity for Israeli animators—many of whom were already working abroad—to build skills locally, with the long-term potential to develop their own projects.[3]

Howard's production philosophy emphasized succession planning as much as launching a first film. "The secret to building a studio is the second film, not the first film," he said, stressing that a team assembled for one production needed a clear path to the next to remain intact.[2] His stated approach was to identify at least three projects in development so the studio would have options, with the possibility that a sequel might follow a successful first feature.[3]

Animation Lab's physical home was embedded in a larger JVP initiative to concentrate media and technology companies in central Jerusalem. The planned permanent home for the studio and its sister companies was a 3,000-square-meter former government mint on Hebron Road, originally built in the 1930s in the Bauhaus style and undergoing renovation.[4] Until that building was ready, staff worked in temporary offices at Jerusalem Technology Park in the south of the city.[4]

Erel Margalit deliberately chose central Jerusalem over Tel Aviv, Herzliya, or a Jerusalem industrial-technology zone, hoping that geographic proximity between related creative companies would generate what he called a local "buzz" and attract further investment and talent to the city.[4] The complex was framed not only as a commercial venture but as a contribution to Jerusalem's urban fabric and part of an effort to make the city a leading center for digital animation.[6]