Home
If you haven’t seen The Wumblers, an animated half-hour show for preschoolers airing on TBN, the back story will make you want to. Creator Laura Wellington first began drawing the characters (a group of brightly colored, bulbous creatures with an air of Ziggy about them) as a high school student. After losing her husband to cancer in 2002, she rediscovered them. But this time around, she took her sketches to a higher level and her four children (now between the ages of 8 and 14) became involved, too.
Where did you find the resolve to turn your drawings into a TV show? Did it take a while to happen?
I met with hundreds of people before bringing The Wumblers to fruition. Having not been in television before, I also had to deal with a huge learning curve. My dogged determination resulted from a purpose beyond myself. Somewhere along the line, I exchanged my own “present day” for the “future of children.”
How did your kids help out with The Wumblers?
When casting the voices of the characters, I asked my executive producer to choose three preliminary voices for each. [Then] my children and I would sit in our basement, huddled around one computer, and download those voices off an ftp site. We listened to every one of them together and voted on the best voice for each character. In my mind, the ears of my children [provided] an accurate measure of my audience’s response.
Did The Wumblers help you and your family deal with the loss of your husband?
Creating the series bonded us together during a time when we most likely could have been torn apart. Whether we were discussing storylines, music, characters or new animation, the series [became] very much a part of all of us. As my Wumblers were helping to provide hope for my own children, I thought that giving them to all children would provide the very same benefits on a larger scale.
What do you hope viewers will take away from the show?
We live in a rather large world but the fact of the matter is, we live here together. We all affect each other, regardless of borders or various differences. Teaching children to instinctively view the world on a global scale, embracing diversity…is a necessity.
Like the Wumblers’ community, so many wonderful people from extremely different backgrounds, religions, countries and cultures all came together to create this series. Humanity and a love for children bridged our differences…If we could bridge these differences on a small scale, the world can do so on a larger scale.
