Editing Oliver Postgate (section)

==Early career==
[[File:Oliver Postgate BBC Radio4 Desert Island Discs 15 July 2007 b007snc7.flac|thumb|right|The speaking voice of Oliver Postgate, from the BBC Radio 4 programme ''[[Desert Island Discs]]'', 15 July 2007]]
Postgate joined the [[British Home Guard|Home Guard]] in 1942 while studying at the [[Kingston School of Art]], but when he became liable for military service during the [[World War II|Second World War]] the following year, he declared himself a [[conscientious objector]], as his father had done during the [[First World War]].<ref name=ODNB/> He was initially refused recognition; he accepted a medical examination as a first step to call up, and then reported for duty with the Army in [[Windsor, Berkshire|Windsor]], but refused to put on the uniform.  He was [[court-martialled]] and sentenced to three months in [[Feltham Prison]]. This qualified him to return to the Appellate Tribunal, where he was granted exemption conditional upon working on the land or in social service, the unserved portion of his sentence being remitted.  He worked on farms until the end of the war, when he went to [[occupied Germany]], working for the [[Red Cross]] in social relief work.<ref name="auto1"/>

On return to the UK, from 1948 he attended the [[London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art]], but drifted through a number of different jobs, never really finding his niche.<ref name=CliveBanks/>

In 1957 he was appointed a [[stage manager]] with [[Associated-Rediffusion]], which then held the [[ITV (TV network)|ITV franchise]] for London.<ref name=CliveBanks/> 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&nbsp;– on which animated characters were attached to a painted background, and then photographed through a 45-degree mirror&nbsp;– he persuaded [[Peter Firmin]], who was then teaching at the [[Central School of Art]],<ref name="DragonsFriendlySociety"/> 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.<ref name="CliveBanks"/>

After the success of ''Alexander the Mouse'', Postgate agreed a deal to make the next series on film, for a budget of £175 per programme.<ref name=CliveBanks/> 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 an honorary Chinese painter to produce the backgrounds, but as the painter was classical Chinese-trained he produced them in [[Perspective (graphical)|three-quarters view]], rather than in the conventional [[Egyptian hieroglyphs|Egyptian full-view]] manner used for flat animation under a camera.<ref name=CliveBanks/> This resulted in the Firmin-produced characters looking as though they were short in one leg, but the success of the production provided the foundation for Postgate with Firmin to start up his own company solely producing animated children's programmes.