After a successful first season as the number-one preschool series on commercial TV, Wonder Pets! creators have moved to the waterfront. All images courtesy of Nick Jr.

South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan is a mixture of many things: a destination for tourists in search of 19^th century New York history... a lunch and after-work gathering spot for nearby Wall Streeters... and, somewhat unexpectedly, the neighborhood where one of TV's most intriguing animated preschool series is created.

The production company known as Little Airplane is a recent arrival to the Seaport. Launched in 1999 by former Little Bill head writer Josh Selig, Little Airplane gave up its Tribeca digs at the beginning of the year for their new home a block away from the waterfront.

The more squeamish visitor must brave the posters for a "Bodies," a pseudo-scientific display of skinless, freeze-dried and semi-dissected corpses just across the street to find the company. Climb a flight of stairs and you're inside two adjoining 19^th century buildings that have been gutted and joined together to create a huge open space. The buildings' floors are slightly offset from each other and linked via half-flights of stairs; with its mix of exposed brick and polished wood floors it looks like a dream loft from a Hollywood movie, but it's home to the Nick Jr. series The Wonder Pets!

Wonder Pets! originated with its creator and exec producer Josh Selig and grew out of a pair of interstitials produced for Nickelodeon.

The wide-open, walls-free architecture is a reflection of how Wonder Pets! is created. After a successful first season (according to Nickelodeon, it's the number-one preschool series on commercial TV), the show's creators have eliminated the separate departments that used to work on all the episodes in favor of independent "production pods."

"There are three pods," explains Jennifer Oxley, Little Airplane's creative director. "Each one is a team of people: storyboard artists, designers, animators and editors, with an associate producer overseeing the process. Every aspect of production is in that pod. The storyboard artist and the designer who will eventually be doing the characters can hear the writer's pitch and take part in the conversation going on around that story. It makes for much better communication and work flow."

The pods are named for the show's three animal stars: guinea pig Linny, duckling Ming-Ming and turtle Tuck. Each episode follows the trio as they jump into their homemade airplane, fly out of their preschool home and come to the aid of a baby animal to the tune of an original music score.

The show's concept originated with its creator and exec producer Josh Selig and grew out of a pair of interstitials produced for Nickelodeon. The original shorts followed Linny out of her cage as she adventured into outer space and under the sea. Little Airplane's previous efforts (including Oobi! for Noggin and Playhouse Disney's Go Baby!) had all been live-action, but Selig wanted to try a different approach for Linny, one that came to be known as "photo puppetry."

"The idea was appealing to me because I wanted [the interstitials] to have a reality to it," says Selig. "Cartoon animals can do special things, but it's very familiar, so many great shows do that. The idea of taking photos of real pets that can do these amazing things felt more special to me. I didn't know how to get there but I really liked the idea. That's where Jennifer came in and sorted out the style, the look of the whole show."

Oxley took the idea and ran with it. "Once Josh came to me with idea of using photos, I started to think, 'How am I going to do this?' First we photographed a guinea pig and got every position we could think of for animation -- a full turnaround, different hand positions and so on." The animal took direction like a pro. "This baby guinea pig just let us move him around, almost stop motion-style. He was the sweetest, nicest guinea pig in the world, which comes through onscreen."

Each production pod consists of 17-20 people. The show's photo puppetry look begins with real photos cut up like paper dolls, which are then manipulated on the computer.

Oxley's experience in video-based preschool shows goes back to Blue's Clues and her work there as an After Effects artist. "I was one of the animators who kicked off the show, I worked on it for three years. Then I got hired on to direct Little Bill, which used After Effects, but in a different way. We used a lot of drawn animation and did our compositing, also some puppeting in After Effects. Then I came on board here. All three shows look different, but they all used After Effects."

Each production pod consists of between 17 and 20 people, with outside designers or animators occasionally tapped for more complex episodes. Photo puppetry begins with "real photos we cut up and break down almost like paper dolls, so that we can move them in the computer," says Oxley. "We also create backgrounds that are photo-real, but in layers that we can move around." 'Team Linny's lead designer Alexandria Fogerty adds that "we also enhance them with color and lighting to make them more kid-friendly -- a place they'd like to be." On her computer screen a dull-looking barnyard is now bright and colorful and a grayish wood fence has turned a deep, rich brown. The background, assembled from any number of photographs has taken on a storybook feel, but one that is still anchored in reality. The pictures come from stock sources -- Corbis and the like -- while toys, fabric textures and other items are photographed in-house to provide the designers with all the imagery they need to build the Wonder Pets' world.