Smallfilms

Smallfilms is a British company that made animated television programmes for children, from 1959 to the 1980s. In 2014 the company was operating again and producing a remake of the Clangers. It was originally a partnership between Oliver Postgate (writer, animator and narrator) and Peter Firmin (modelmaker and illustrator). Several very popular series of short films were made using stop-motion animation, including Clangers, Noggin the Nog, and Ivor the Engine. Another Smallfilms production, Bagpuss, came top of a BBC poll to find the favourite children's programme.

In 1957 Postgate was appointed a stage manager with Associated-Rediffusion, which then held the commercial weekday television franchise for London. Attached to the children's programming section, he thought he could do better with the relatively low budgets of the then black and white television productions.

Postgate wrote Alexander the Mouse, a story about a mouse born to be king. Using an Irish-produced magnetic system – on which animated characters were attached to a painted background, and then photographed through a 45 degree mirror – he persuaded Peter Firmin, who was then teaching at the Central School of Art, to create the background scenes. Postgate later recalled they undertook around 26 of these programmes live-to-air, which were made harder by the production problems encountered by the use and restrictions of using magnets.

After the relative success of Alexander the Mouse, Postgate agreed a deal to make the next series on film, for a budget of £175 per programme. Making a stop motion animation table in his bedroom, he wrote the Chinese story The Journey of Master Ho. This was intended for deaf children, a distinct advantage in that the production required no soundtrack which reduced the production costs. He engaged a painter to produce the backgrounds, but as the painter was classical Chinese-trained he produced them in three-quarters view, rather than in the conventional Egyptian full-view manner used for flat animation under a camera. This resulted in the Firmin-produced characters looking like they were short in one leg, but the success of the production provided the foundation for Postgate and Firmin to start up their own company solely producing animated children's programmes.

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