We created Olobob Top to encourage #CreativePlay in children from zero upwards, through adventure-packed stories that involve a magical moment of character creation. In every episode our trio of characters put together shapes to invent a brand new person, creature or thing, and bring it to life. It’s a wonderfully empowering moment, and children LOVE it and want to re-enact it themselves. So we encourage parents to get creative with their little ones. But don’t worry! Being truly creative means you can’t make mistakes - they don’t exist! The only thing that matters is to have fun whilst creating, enjoy the process.
We’ve run events and workshops on creativity, made videos and books about it, and so we encourage you to have a look around our site and download activities to continue your child’s creative journey.
The original spark came from a creative workshop run by Leigh Hodgkinson. She’d noticed some children were scared of mark-making, especially in front of groan ups, or their peers. The fear of spoiling a perfect white page was very real. To counter this Leigh took a set of unique shapes, with bright fun colours and textures, and asked the children to create characters. They were her shapes, her colours, so the children couldn’t actually go wrong, and the freedom and confidence this brought to the room was tangible. And in that workshop Leigh herself dreamt up characters who would one day become Bobble, Tib and Lalloo!
As parents themselves, Leigh and her husband, Steve, know the value of creativity in learning. It can be a trigger point to playful exploration of any subject. So, yes, of course they tested Olobob Top out on their own children - in fact, their children voice two Olobob characters!
Leigh designed the whole Olobob world, from it’s biggest inhabitant (Groan-Up) down to it’s smallest (The Leafs). She is a prolific creative. An animation director, picture book author and illustrator, crafter and maker all rolled in to one. She is also married to Steve Smith!
Steve has been making things move for as long as he can remember. He runs a studio, Beakus, which had a hand in creating Yakka Dee! and Numtums (both on CBeebies). But if he were to admit it, he’d say his favourite part of making Olobob Top is recording the brilliant child voice artists - their exuberance shines through in every episode! He is also married to Leigh Hodgkinson.
Contact us at studio@beakus.com