the production provided the foundation for Postgate and Firmin to start up their own company, solely producing animated children's television programmes, initially for ITV, but soon afterward with the BBC. Postgate's initial BBC career was not solely concerned with Smallfilms. To gain experience, he accepted a contract as a television director in the BBC Children's Department in 1960, on a show entitled Little Laura, another animated series made on film, written and drawn by V. H. Drummond. The series continued in production until 1962, with Postgate credited also as animator on the 1962 series. He also wrote serials for long-running BBC children's programmes Blue Peter and stories for Vision On. History of Smallfilms Setting up the business in a disused cowshed at Firmin's home in Blean near Canterbury, Kent, Postgate and Firmin made children's animation programmes, based on concepts that mostly originated from Postgate. Firmin did the artwork and built the models, whilst Postgate wrote the scripts, did the stop motion filming, and voiced many of the characters. Smallfilms was able to produce two minutes of TV-ready film per day, twelve times as much as a conventional stop motion animation studio, with Postgate moving the (originally cardboard) characters himself, and working his 16mm camera frame-by-frame with a home-made clicker. As Postgate voiced so many of the productions, including the WereBear story tapes, his distinctive voice became familiar to generations of children. They began in 1959 with Ivor the Engine, a series for ITV about a Welsh steam locomotive who wanted to sing in a choir, based on Postgate's wartime encounter with Welshman Denzyl Ellis, who was once a fireman on the Royal Scot. It was remade in colour for the BBC in the 1970s. This was followed, also in 1959, by Noggin the Nog, their first production for the BBC, which established Smallfilms as a safe and reliable pair of hands to produce children's entertainment, in the days when the number of UK television channels was restricted to two. In 2000, Postgate and his friend Loaf set up a small publishing company called The Dragons Friendly Society, to look after Noggin the Nog, Pogles' Wood and Pingwings. After Postgate's death in December 2008, Smallfilms was inherited by his son Daniel. Universal took the distribution rights to the works of Smallfilms. Any such agreement does not include the materials published through The Dragons Friendly Society. In 2014, Daniel collaborated with Firmin