'', 15 July 2007 Postgate joined the
Home Guard in 1942 while studying at the
Kingston School of Art, but when he became liable for military service during the
Second World War the following year, he declared himself a
conscientious objector, as his father had done during the
First World War. 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, 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. 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. In 1957 he was appointed a
stage manager with
Associated-Rediffusion, which then held the
ITV 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 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 an honorary Chinese 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 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. ==Smallfilms==