As a very young boy in the early 1960’s, my grandmother would read me Rupert Bear by Mary Tourtel and one particular book. It was called Rupert’s Mysterious Flight, a story about Rupert’s birthday present, which had arrived in a huge wooden crate. Excitedly, Rupert opened to the crate, to find an instruction manual and a number of aeroplane parts. Assisted by his Daddy, Rupert assembled the airplane, donned his flying suit and goggles and after a quick goodbye from his parents, he took off and few up into the clouds to find a wonderful aerial kingdom inhabited by toucans - magical. As a 4 year old, I was utterly transfixed and wanted to be Rupert from that day - my imagination was continually ‘running away with me’……

I attended Wellingborough School, but I didn’t enjoy school life very much, apart from art and target rifle shooting. My grandfather had been a keen artist and had shot for the England team at Bisley - it’s funny how genes run in families. My first job as a trainee shoemaker within the family business called Barker Shoes , then selling cars, a spell in the local police force, before I finally found something I love doing: photography. I’ve run my commercial photography business called Charles Ward Photography since 1985.

As a family, we would often holiday in Devon and it wasn’t long before we discovered Salcombe, returning most years. It was natural that I would then start to bring my own family back there in future years and that is where our story starts. I created The Salties around 27 years ago, while reading bedtime stories to my boys James and Freddie, during our annual holiday to Salcombe. Assisted by my wife Katie, we recorded the stories in a small red book, in the hope that we might publish them one day. The red book lay in a drawer for 10 years, when Katie found it and we both decided it was time for The Salties to become reality. I had already designed a range of characters - Captain, the harbourmaster (based on on my Milo) and a number of little sea creatures, all living and working in Salty town. Allow me to introduce them to you:

I decided to ask my good friend and professional illustrator, Phil Garner to help re-work my ideas. Over the next 12 months, we met each week to finalise the branding and the artwork, eventually producing a full range of marketing materials to promote The Salties. With everything ready, I decided to take an exhibition stand at Brand Licensing Europe (BLE - October 2-3 2007) to exhibit my ideas and hopefully find a licensing and merchandising partner. It was at BLE that I met Francis Fitzpatrick and we formed a partnership to promote The Salties around the world. Francis introduced me to Tiger Bells and they created our very first animation (shown below) Another BLE contact was Funtastic (now called Fantastic) magazine and they started featuring The Salties each month and proved to be excellent publicity for us.

The Salties website followed shortly afterwards and I was contacted by Anton Mullan who very kindly offered to write The Salties very first soundtrack. I travelled down to Bristol to meet Anton at his home and listened to his recording - it was superb and I will always be grateful to Anton for so generously donating his time and expertise completely free of charge. Please click the screen above to listen to Anton’s production.

Francis and I visited an number of animation studios, including HIT Entertainment in London. Pictured right is Francis and me, together with my son James in a Skipper suit. We had great fun sending him up to see once of the chief execs in the list!

Our next trip was to Cannes, to visit Francis at MIP TV an international TV market and somewhere that Francis knew well. It was at MIP COM that Francis had sold his own show called Jakers a story of rural life in Ireland conceived by Francis’ wife Denise. James bravely donned The Skipper suite again and we both made tracks for sunny France.

The years past and Francis kept in touch to keep me up to date with the news from the trade fairs. He’d always made it clear that finding a production company willing to make the animated shows would be difficult. Then we would need to find a TV station that would broadcast The Salties to a pre-school audience at the correct time slot. Finally, we would only monetise the animation via a toy manufacturer and other licensing companies - it would be an up hill battle to find them!

One day, I received a call from Francis to say that he’d just attended Kidscreen in New York and had news about The Salties. Apparently, he had met someone who thought Cosgrove Hall might be interested and had suggested a meeting. This was most encouraging news, but first, I needed to learn more about Cosgrove Hall. A quick Google search, revealed this to be one of the of the most famous British animation companies, founded by Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall. Known for it’s animation series Danger Mouse, The Wind in the Willows and Count Duckula, the company had recently closed (2009), so I wondered what Francis had discovered in New York?

Francis arranged for us to meet the Cosgrove team at the premises of 422 TV in Manchester. I seem to recall it was February 2011 and I collected Francis from Manchester Airport. I had collected everything together for the meeting; folders full of character images, the Salty Cove world, printed bibles (see examples below), clay models of Captain, Squeeze the octopus and Scurry the hermit crab and lastly, the little red book, where the idea started.

We entered a very swish boardroom to find a group of people sitting expectantly. After a brief introduction by Francis, I began opening up folders and flight cases on the table in front of everyone and much to their surprise and amusement. I don’t think they could quite believe that this ‘crazy photographer’ from Northampton could have gone to quite such an effort an expense with an idea for an animation. However, it seemed they though The Salties had potential, because they told me that they would start to re-work my idea and asked Francis and I to return for another meeting in a few weeks. Exciting times!

A few weeks later, we did indeed return and this time we would meet some of Cosgrove Hall’s ex-employees, who had been asked to come up with some new ideas. Mark Hall explained that he felt we should keep “Captain’ (now called ‘Skipper’) was a grandfather type character and would become the narrator of the stories. Cosgrove Hall had a fine reputation for storytelling and it seemed they would call upon the best for The Salties. Mark and Brian had also introduced a brand new character, called Pip and I was told that pre-school children needed to see a character of approximately their own age, so Pip was born. I managed to grab my phone and took a quick photo of them as they discussed the characters with Ben Turner. I also recorded a few seconds of video as Mark spoke. Little did I know the photograph would become so important in the years to come.
More meetings followed and I realised that I now needed to start taking some photographs of the new team. Mark , Brian and Francis had decided to for a new company called Cosgrove Hall Fitzpatrick (CHF) and Pip would be the company’s first animation. To think that Mark and Brian had come out of retirement to make my ideas a reality, was quite incredible and I will always be grateful to them.

Sadly, Mark Hall died shortly after this photograph was taken. This was a huge blow to CHF, as Mark had always been the business brains behind Cosgrove Hall and Brian the hugely talented creative. They were the perfect partnership. I attended Mark’s funeral by invitation of his son Simon and could see that his father was held in very high esteem by some very famous creatives and actors, including Sir David Jason OBE. Shortly after Mark’s untimely death, his son Simon Hall became Managing Director of a brand new company - CHF Pip PLC, but that’s a whole new story called Pip Ahoy!