Little Bear, Away Resorts
Five Little Bears. A Pre-School Audience. Higher Colour. Better Movement. Two Months.
Commission: Away Resorts | Little Bear | Pre-School Puppet Character Replication & Development
The Brief
Away Resorts' pre-school programme needed its own characters — smaller, brighter, more accessible versions of the beloved Bear family that Away Resorts audiences had already grown to love. Lucy's Little Bears were pre-existing character assets, originally developed by a previous puppet builder, that had served the programme well but that Away Resorts wanted to refresh, replicate and improve.
Creative Director Max Barraclough came to Creature Encounters — continuing the long-term character partnership that had already produced the full-scale Bear suits, the Scratch and Lucy Muppet-style puppets, and the ongoing maintenance and development of Away Resorts' entire character portfolio.
The brief: replicate the Little Bears in multiple copies, with material improvements — a more vibrant colour palette and an increased range of head motion — that would make them more visually engaging for very young audiences and more performable for the puppeteers working with them.
Five copies. Two months.
The Build
Replicating and improving a pre-existing character simultaneously is a particular kind of brief — one that requires the discipline of fidelity and the confidence of development at the same time. Too conservative and the improvements are cosmetic. Too radical and the character loses continuity with what audiences already know and love.
The balance we struck was precise. The colour palette was enhanced — richer, more saturated, more immediately legible to a pre-school audience whose visual world is built on strong, clear colour signals. The head range of motion was increased — a mechanical improvement that gives performers more expressive vocabulary and gives young audiences more to respond to, more movement to track, more life to believe in.
Everything else was held. The character that Away Resorts' youngest guests already knew was preserved in all its essentials, while the tools available to the performers who bring it to life were meaningfully improved.
A Note on Pre-School Audiences
Pre-school audiences are the most demanding audience in live performance. Not because they are critical — they are the opposite of critical, open and generous in ways that older audiences have learned to suppress — but because they are entirely honest. A character that does not hold a very young child's attention does not hold it. There is no polite pretending, no willing suspension of disbelief. Either the character is alive, or it isn't.
Building for pre-school audiences therefore requires a specific understanding of how very young children process visual information — the role of colour saturation, the importance of movement range, the particular quality of eye contact that a puppet can offer and that a very young child will respond to with complete, unguarded trust. The Little Bears were built with all of that understanding in place.
A vivid colour palette is not a stylistic choice for a pre-school character. It is a functional requirement. An increased head range of motion is not a technical nicety. It is the difference between a puppet that a two-year-old looks at and one that a two-year-old looks into.
The Specifications
Five copies. Rod-controlled arm. Multi-directional head with increased range of motion. Enhanced colour palette for pre-school audience engagement.
Build time: Two months.
The Away Resorts Partnership
The Little Bears commission is the fourth Creature Encounters project for Away Resorts — following the full-scale Bear suits, the Scratch and Lucy Muppet-style puppets, and ongoing maintenance across the estate. Each project has built on the last: the understanding deeper, the brief more precise, the results more consistently excellent.
Away Resorts' ambition — to offer the world's leading holiday park character experience — is not a marketing line. It is a genuinely demanding creative standard that shapes every commission. We are proud to be the partner they trust to meet it, across every scale of character build from a five-inch puppet to a full-scale walk-around animatronic rig.
Thinking About Something Similar?
If you are planning a pre-school character programme for a holiday park, visitor attraction, nursery, children's entertainment company or broadcaster — whether building from scratch or developing existing character assets — we would love to talk.
We have extensive experience building puppet characters specifically for pre-school audiences, with a deep understanding of what very young children need from a character encounter and how to build the mechanisms that deliver it. We also offer ongoing maintenance, replication and development services for existing character portfolios.
To arrange an informal, no-obligation Discovery Call with Jamie and Michael, please use the Enquire button below.
Creature Encounters are designers, makers and performers of extraordinary puppet experiences, based in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. We have delivered bespoke puppet characters for visitor attractions, pre-school programmes, theatre, television and live events across the UK and internationally, for clients including Away Resorts, Mark Thompson Productions, Atomic London / Greater Anglia Trains, Vectis Ventures / Robin Hill Country Park, Vectis Ventures / Blackgang Chine, Animal Madness Ltd, Big Brum Theatre in Education, Lakeside Arts Nottingham, and the Remal International Festival in Kuwait.
