Whether it was with mud or your mother's good linen (or both), the best part of childhood was using your imagination to create something out of just about anything. Nickelodeon celebrates those youthful endeavours with three :30 idents that explore the ideas of creative play and cooperation between kids.

Produced by London-based MeWe.tv, "Diversity and Acceptance", "Humor and Irreverence", and "Kid Empowerment" feature children using household objects - which run the gamut from tennis balls, clothes pegs and cutlery to table cloths, ping-pong balls and plastic tubing - to create fantastical machines, instruments and forts.

"For me, the idea was about celebrating being a kid," says Nickelodeon exec Paul O'Higgins, who commissioned the spots. "The idents help younger kids feel it's OK to still build stuff out of bits of rubbish; it's OK to let your imagination run wild."

According to producer Cassius Colman, MeWe.tv aimed to "do away with a manufactured and condescending approach to promotion for kids", by relying less on gimmickry and, guided by the network's brief to include kid empowerment, humor and imagination, more on an organic aesthetic.

"We chose a craft-based approach to the project in order to place the spots in the real world," says Colman. "We felt that if the spots were too fantastic, [for example] computer graphics-based, they would only engage as opposed to inspire kids. We wanted the spots to make kids active and give them inspiration to create amazing things for themselves."

Illustrators/designers Jethro Haynes and Nick Taylor created the eccentric, cardboard-based models, which were comprised of about 50% household objects culled from second-hand stores. Doubles of some elements were used so that the child actors, who were largely cast based on their creative abilities, could rebuild and paint them on camera.

"We originally had planned to do a lot more animation throughout," says Colman about the only animated element of the spots, the orange bubbles accompanying the Nickelodeon end tag. "But it became apparent in the edit that it wasn't required when the machines and objects were put on set with the kids." That organic approach also carried over into the music. Composed by JeanGa for Cassette Records, it's comprised of simple, playful percussive sounds and strings that provide a winsome backdrop.

"The soundtrack was very much a free-range thought process by the two directors [Luke and Jody Hudson-Powell] who worked with JeanGa," says O'Higgins. "It pauses, it giggles. It just has a really nice feel to it, as if you're listening to the kid's thoughts as he builds the machine."

MeWe.TV http://www.mewe.tv
Nickelodeon http://www.nick.com