THE animator Ivor Wood specialised in stop-frame animation and during a career dating back to the Sixties was fundamental in the development of some of children’s television’s most memorable characters, including those appearing in The Magic Roundabout, The Herbs, The Wombles and, most recently, Postman Pat.

Ivor Wood was born in Leeds in 1932. His father was British and his mother French. After the war he moved with his family to a small village near Lyon. He spent the next 22 years in France, and after completing his schooling he studied Fine Arts at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris.

Wood set out to become an artist but when he failed to sell his paintings he worked in a factory to earn a living. Within a year, he was introduced to the French advertising production company, La Comète, where he began to develop his talent as an animator.

While there, he met a fellow animator, Serge Danot, who devised Le Manège Enchanté — which would be retitled The Magic Roundabout when it was shown on British television. Wood began to work with Danot in a derelict Parisian house as the original animator on the children’s series.

The programme told how Mr Rusty owned a merry-go-round neglected by children until a magical jack-in-the-box, Zebedee, cast a spell to bring them back.

In 1964, Danot and Wood sold several episodes to ORTF, the French television station, and then to the BBC, which had earlier rejected the series believing it to be too difficult to dub into English. Joy Whitby, the producer of Play School, was asked to assess the proposal and she suggested Eric Thompson, a Play School presenter, who narrated the story and created the characters’ voices. The Magic Roundabout was first shown in Britain in October 1965, just before the evening news, and quickly attracted a cult following.

When, in 1967, the BBC announced it was rescheduling the show to a late afternoon slot, many adult viewers complained. At its peak the show had eight million viewers.

Wood began working with FilmFair, a production company, and his next big project was the company’s production of The Herbs. While its creator, Michael Bond, supplied the stories, Wood made the puppets that lived in the secret herb garden; he also directed the 39 15-minute films commissioned by the BBC. From the kitchen table of his Paris flat he painstakingly used stop-motion animation, previously adopted for The Magic Roundabout, to make the films. The series was first aired in 1968 under the Watch with Mother umbrella, and as further instalments were added the show became a mainstay in the schedules for years; such was its popularity it even produced a spin-off, The Adventures of Parsley.

Next stop for Ivor Wood was The Wombles. When the author Elisabeth Beresford adapted her stories, first written in 1968, for television, FilmFair produced the series, with Wood directing and creating the puppets. First seen patrolling Wimbledon Common in 1973, the litter-conscious creatures appeared in 60 five-minute films.

The 1970s was a busy decade for Wood and FilmFair. Other programmes he worked on included Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings in 1974 and, in 1975, Paddington. Adapted from stories by Edward MacLachlan, Simon featured in 13 episodes, and was a rare excursion into 2-D animation for Wood. For Paddington he used his immense talents to combine stop-frame animation of a 3-D model (Paddington) with animated 2-D cardboard cutouts for other characters, within a 3-D setting.

The first batch of 30 episodes was followed, four years later, by a further 29 instalments. Based on Michael Bond’s popular stories about a marmalade-loving bear from Peru, the series became a worldwide hit.

In his autobiography, Bears and Forebears, Bond recalls: “Ivor wasn’t the first person to suggest making a television series about Paddington, but he was the first and only one who gave me the feeling of being on exactly the same wavelength and in whom I had total trust.”

After designing puppets for Hattytown Tales, a joint venture between Hattyland Enterprises and FilmFair, which ran to 39 episodes, Wood set up his own production company, Woodland Animations.

He invested heavily in the business and he was rewarded for his commitment by producing one of television’s most popular children’s programmes, Postman Pat. With scripts by John Cunliffe, on whose stories the films were based, Wood designed and directed the programme about the antics of Pat, the exceptionally helpful postman from Greendale, and his trusty old black-and-white cat, Jess, who was always at his side.

After the initial tranche of 26 episodes in 1980, a further 30 films were made for transmission between 1990 and 1991. The programme was viewed around the world and actively merchandised.

Woodland Animations’ other successes included Gran (1982), created by Joanne and Michael Cole; Bertha (1985) and Charlie Chalk (1987). Woodland established itself as an internationally respected company in the creation of children’s programming and, in 2001, it was acquired for £5.1 million by Entertainment Rights.

Wood is survived by his wife, Josiane, and his son.

Ivor Wood, animator, was born on May 4, 1932, and died on October 13, 2004, aged 72