New Milkshake! preschool series ‘Pop Paper City’ blends 3D adventure with live-action craft
Skwigly
A new and vibrant 3D craft show is launching on Channel 5’s Milkshake! for pre-schoolers on Saturday 12th of November. Pop Paper City is the first show to blend 3D adventure with live-action craft in a series of 11-minute episodes that focuses on a group of unique friends who live at Pop Paper City, the capital of the stunning and endlessly peculiar paper world. The characters, voiced by real children, find new ways to have fun together by creating new parts of their already impressive world, using craft to solve their problems and complete their adventures.
Produced by LoveLove Films, an award-winning independent animation and video production company based in Bournemouth, the new series aims to engage children with live action montages within the show to inspire children to make their own paper creations, encouraging ‘doing as well as viewing’. To encourage the children watching at home to create their own crafts, the character Helping Hand, voiced by TV star Nick Mohammed (Ted Lasso, Intelligence, Christopher Robin), plays an integral part in Pop Paper City. Helping Hand takes the form of a real hand, which comes down into the screen, interacting with the 3D world to help the characters when they need an adult’s supervision.
Founder and Managing Director of LoveLove Films, Georgina Hurcombe, was inspired to create a craft series after growing up watching the likes of Blue Peter and Art Attack:
I was particularly inspired by my memories of building the Thunderbirds’ ‘Tracy Island’. Even though mine looked more like a papier-mâché and chicken wire blob, I remember how much I absolutely loved making it, and also how all my friends were trying to make it at the same time too. We’d go round each other’s houses and spend hours crafting, cutting things out, sticking, making plenty of mess but having a great time doing it!
The series follows characters Plom, Phoebe, Mae-Mae, Zip, Hooper and Fly as they explore the world of Pop Paper City, a vivid, vast, and exciting place for the characters and audience to enjoy. The characters travel to urban environments, explore caves, the ocean or even outer space. Just like children’s imaginations, the world of Pop Paper City has no bounds for creativity and exploration.
As well as encouraging ‘doing as well as viewing’, Pop Paper City also encourages sustainability. In the series, the Helping Hand character suggests to the children watching at home that they can use recycled materials as well as reusing everyday household items such as egg boxes, cardboard or toilet roll tubes.
We are passionate about taking on projects for positive change and have previously worked with the United Nations Environment to produce animated children’s content about the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling. I truly believe that Pop Paper City has the power to inspire children across the globe to ‘get crafty’. Pop Paper City has always been our passion project. I’m delighted to be in production with the series and can’t wait for it to be on screens both in the UK and around the world.
-Georgina Hurcombe
Pop Paper City launches on Saturday the 12th of November at 9am on Channel 5’s Milkshake! and then every Saturday and Sunday at 9am.