«IvyBears» Creates Animated Project After YouTube Setback, Reaches Cannes (Exclusive)

A graduate of theater and film, Kan Hilaz's lifelong love of chewing gum ultimately led him to the commercial success and birth of the «IvyBears» brand and vitamin IP. In an online interview with Variety, he said: “IvyBears was never simply a consumer brand that suddenly decided to enter entertainment.

From consumer products to character-driven series, IvyBears founder and CEO Dr. Kan Hillaz presented at MipJunior what he called his "reverse flywheel strategy" for getting his brand's content-rich presence on YouTube.

A theater and film graduate, it was ultimately Con Hillaz's lifelong love of chewing gum that led him to commercial success and the birth of the IvyBears vitamin IP and brand.

What started as a father's personal mission to help his son who was struggling with food and grew into an international consumer brand is now an entertainment IP that Hylas coined as his "reverse flywheel strategy." Popular in Variety

"I've always been fascinated by the way animation creates characters that become part of our lives," Hylas recalls. In my early childhood, I was a big fan of Transformers and He-Man: Masters of the Universe. "Later, in the late '80s and early '90s, it was mostly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ... until Pixar launched Toy Story and animation changed forever from digital 3D to full-dimensional."

Yet in all of these success stories, Hylas emphasized that traditional entertainment companies typically create characters, build an audience, and subsequently commercialize that audience through consumer products and merchandise. "We intentionally changed this model. Not because fun was an afterthought, but because life gave me a deeply personal reason to start with products."

From the very beginning, turning automorphs into super-powerful heroes and reflecting these characters on labels and animated narratives was actually the foundation of Hylaz's strategy.

Imagine a child watching the IvyBears on TV, making an emotional connection with those characters, and then recognizing those same heroes in a product at a supermarket or drugstore. Entertainment and consumer product are no longer two separate businesses. They become part of a world.

For the CEO and founder of Malta-based animation studio Moontrail, taking this inverted approach means that IvyBears can benefit from the international retail infrastructure through which our characters can reach customers, as Moontrail characters and IvyBears continue to evolve into a multi-IP animation studio.

What Haylaz still means is producing quality content based on impactful characters that kids can relate to. "I believe children are much more sophisticated viewers than adults are sometimes given credit for," he added. "A colorful character alone doesn't make an emotional connection. When you're creating a character, you're looking for very unique traits that people can still relate to, while making sure the characters complement each other. When I thought about the IvyBears, what I definitely wanted to avoid was another set of 'cute or fluffy' characters that were too predictable. I see the IvyBears as a very 'Aids' band. Distinctive personalities with unique traits: they favor the good, but like to punish the bad, hence their not really pretty but incredibly confident attitude.”

Hylaz relied on artificial intelligence tools, guided by human talents, to bring his characters to life in an approach he openly talked about.

I believe the debate (about artificial intelligence) is both legitimate and necessary. Artificial intelligence is not a movie maker. Artificial intelligence is a tool in the hands of the filmmaker. At Moontrail, creative direction, storytelling, emotional decisions, and artistic judgment remain purely human responsibilities. We are not looking to exclude artists from the filmmaking process. "We are working to remove many of the financial and technical barriers that have historically prevented independent creators from implementing ambitious ideas."

As he framed it, this approach allowed Moontrail to greatly speed up production and cut costs, producing 12-minute animated episodes in about two weeks.

We've built a relatively lean studio of over 20 full-time people that combines traditional filmmaking expertise with modern AI-powered production workflows. Like me, most of our group has a background in storytelling or film. "What historically would have required millions in upfront capital for an audience to even have a chance to discover can now be independently developed, produced, published and tested."

For Haylaz, the biggest revolution isn't that AI makes animation faster. It's that AI makes independent filmmaking economically achievable on a whole different scale. And that changes who gets to tell the story."

Creating generative AI, Haylaz says, is much more complicated than typing a few commands. "In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Maintaining characters, environments, lighting, visual identity and emotional performances throughout an episode is a fundamental technical and artistic challenge. Since a character may look fantastic in one shot but lose subtle aspects of their identity or expression in another, maintaining cinematic continuity requires considerable attention to oversight, repetition and detail."

While AI can accelerate individual production tasks, it doesn't automatically understand storytelling, timing, or emotional pacing, Haylaz continued. That also adds to the broader challenge of navigating a technology environment that evolves almost weekly, along with important questions about intellectual property and creative rights.

For us, the biggest challenge is not to produce beautiful images, but to turn those images into a coherent and emotionally engaging film, a story that works and ultimately starts with the right script.

Scripts and characters Hilaz is passionate about protecting because he envisions building long-term intellectual assets rather than creating disposable content.

Our characters, their personalities, stories, and visual identity are fundamental assets of Moontrail Animation Studios. Therefore, distinguish between the technologies used to produce the content and the ownership and control of the underlying intellectual property. Commercial licenses, confidentiality, protection of original manufacturing materials and terms governing third-party AI tools are all important considerations in our approach. "Ultimately, our ambition is to create characters of lasting value, and protecting their authenticity is essential to that ambition."

“Essentially, we are leveraging the global popularity of 'IvyBears' to accelerate the growth of our entertainment franchise. Our medium-term ambition is to build IvyBears into an international children's entertainment property, including animated series, feature films, licensing, merchandise, games and more consumer products, while continuing to develop brand new IPs through Moontrail.

IPs like "IvyBears" that Hillaz creates with children at the heart of its creative concerns.

As a father of three, I watch between three and five anime or movies every day. I see the connections they create, the emotions they create, and the messages (and the importance of those messages). Animation is a major emotional tool throughout a child's life."

Hylas originally created IvyBears because he wanted to help his son. “Today, I create animated stories that my children, and hopefully millions of children around the world, can grow up with. To me, that's the thing about storytelling that excites children."