SIMON LUDGATE
Director / Producer / Writer

The Trumps

This was a labour of love. 

I conceived an idea for a new animated series to replace the Simpsons for when it finally went.  

Well, as a six-year old said to me in New York once, you gotta aim big!

The problem was I didn’t have the one or two million pounds needed to produce a full pilot and all the other bits and pieces. I spent two years trailing round with my begging bowl to animation companies who all seemed to develop profound hearing problems simultaneously.  

I was in love with my little beleagured Scots family living in a toxic near future and was more than a little desperate to bring them to life – so I wouldn’t have to continue to have one-sided conversations with imaginary folk. I wanted them to become real.  

Eventually I found a lovely big animation company called 3DTV in Telford who I thought were individually and collectively rather brilliant. They agreed to help develop the project into a fully-functioning pilot and we then spent a further two years working on the 3d mechanics of the characters while they were producing 'Underground Ernie' and lots of other things.

The pilot was starting to take shape and the animation company suddenly went spectacularly bust.  It took a further year to get my project back from the Official Receiver. 

I still love Billy, Maria, Sapphire, Pik, Tik and Tok so if there’s anyone out there with a fat chequebook or a roomful of bored animation artists  – please get in touch immediately!

Oh, and they're called The Trumps because the kids all sport trumps to help their reality-challenged parents remember who they are.

I can so imagine 12 foot high Trumps made out of foam on a carnival float going down 5th Avenue. And imagine the Trumps bendy toys in Hamleys...they will utter 100 different sentences - all of them profane - when you press their nose.

To watch video click here.

Copyright © 2008 Simon Ludgate