Allan is a BAFTA winning Head Writer, Showrunner, Development Producer and Director who has worked in the Children’s Animation and Live Action space for over 20 years in linear as well as digital and interactive. Working as a Creative Consultant/Development Producer, Allan has been a part of many top-rated shows such as Noddy, Thomas, Deer Squad, Tree Fu Tom, Go Jetters, Shaun the Sheep and Horrid Henry, helping to develop new series from concept stage through to production stage, creating characters, locations, gadgets, vehicles and stories to inject shows with originality, character-driven comedy, and heart. He has worked for many major broadcasters over the years including the BBC, Nickelodeon, ITV, iQiyi, Disney and Cartoon Network. Allan works with teams of writers, producers and directors from the concept stage right through to production, creating pitch decks, scripts, series bibles, writer’s bibles, and series plans.
He wrote and directed his first animated short ’SPIF’ which won Best Web Animation at the Bradford Animation Festival, and more recently the latest live-action short film ‘BEEP’ has won 7 international short film festival awards.
He has also worked in the digital media space with Google and Youtube on consulting and producing children’s content – such as producing, writing and directing The Baking Bears, a live-action story-based cookery show, as part of a project to demonstrate Google Studios and its potential. More recently he has been hired to develop and write animated vlogs for Super Sema, an inspirational Youtube Originals show about an African superhero which has over 60 million views.
Allan is also a producer, writer and director of apps and video games, having developed and launched over 20 apps, advised on apps and video games, and produced/written and directed video games such as ‘The Bunker’, a BAFTA-nominated live-action interactive movie released on Playstation, Xbox, PC/MAC and mobile. ‘The Bunker’ was also developed as a short film, won 3 short film festival awards and featured at the Cannes Film Festival. He has also written/developed games for other companies such as TenCent and the BBC.
He is the author/illustrator of over 40 books including cartoon series The Odd Squad and Christmas bestseller The Smelly Sprout.
Allan lives in Berkhamsted with his family and their dog Digby. Oh, and he likes to play the bass guitar.