Bob Bura, who has died aged 93, was one of Britain’s most prolific animators. Working with his long-time collaborator, John Hardwick, he produced hundreds of films and live-action puppet sequences. Through their pioneering techniques of stop-motion, they brought to life characters in classic children’s television programmes from the 1960s to 80s such as Camberwick Green, Trumpton, Chigley and Captain Pugwash.

From the start, their programmes were by far the most technically advanced stop-motion films – where each frame represents a movement of an object, and frame by frame forms a continuous sequence – being made anywhere.

Through their company, Stop Motion, they perennially invented or modified technologies. For instance, their original Mitchell cameras were designed for normal, continuous filming, so Bob commissioned engineering companies to design machines that would enable the shutters to expose one frame at a time, instead of 24 frames per second.

However, straight animation was not enough – in addition to the puppets, they would often animate the background, projecting another film behind the puppets that would be reflected off a special surface called a transit screen. This acted like millions of microscopic cat’s eyes, creating a reflection many times brighter than that of an ordinary mirror. It was on this innovation that I first worked with them.

The results were vivid and stunning and can be seen in the series Look and Read (from 1967), and Words and Pictures, including the animations of the Frog and Toad stories (1970s and 80s). The technique was also used in four ballets for the BBC Schools series Music Time: Petrushka (1968), depicting the original choreography of the 1911 ballet; The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which won a Bafta in 1979; Coppélia (1979); and The Sleeping Beauty (1984). All were directed by Alan Platt, a BBC Schools director, who also made sets and high-quality puppets and was their collaborator for 28 years.

Bura and Hardwick had worked together as puppeteers and entertainers before joining the BBC’s Lime Grove studios in the 1950s, where they made animated film inserts and worked in live marionettes for the BBC Puppet Theatre under the producer Gordon Murray, including on the series A Rubovian Legend (1955-61).

By the 1960s it was clear that string puppets were becoming old-fashioned and so they began their pioneering stop-motion work. Still working with Murray, they animated the highly successful Trumptonshire trilogy. The first series was Camberwick Green (1966), set in a picturesque English village with characters including Windy Miller, Mickey Murphy the Baker, and Mrs Honeyman and her baby. This was followed by Trumpton (1967) – with the firemen Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb – and Chigley (1969). Each series consisted of 13 episodes, all narrated by Brian Cant, with settings by Margaret and Andrew Brownfoot.

Bura and Hardwick had been commissioned by Murray to make the series in black and white, but they filmed it with a second camera in colour – a decision that paid off in the 70s, when many more people had colour televisions.

They would often animate a whole 100ft reel of film (two minutes of action) in sequence with no mistakes, making it a dream for the editor to compile into a finished film. They insisted on shooting one frame per movement at a time when other studios, to save money, would film two frames per movement. As a result, the movements of the puppets were smooth and not jerky.

The pair then worked with the artist and animator John Ryan on the BBC children’s series Mary, Mungo and Midge (1969), The Adventures of Sir Prancelot (1971-72) and Captain Pugwash (1974-75). Ryan produced hand-operated images with, for example, cut-out eyes that could move relative to a character’s face; these were captured by Bura, who lit them, and Hardwick, who filmed them.

Bob was born in Fitzrovia, central London, one of 11 children of Moise Bura, a Romanian who had escaped a pogrom and later changed his name to Morris, and Lucy (nee Blinkhorn), a vaudeville singer. Bob, who attended Netley primary school, had undiagnosed dyslexia, but successfully overcame the lack of understanding of this in early years, and much later, aged 76, was delighted to get a diagnosis.

From an early age his father would take him to West End clubs to sing and perform vaudeville acts such as ventriloquism and fire-eating. For a time in the 30s he was the family breadwinner.

It was while staging Punch and Judy shows on Southsea beach in Portsmouth that Bura first worked with Hardwick. As well as puppet shows they made animated cinema adverts before joining the BBC.

For many years they animated from two large adjoining houses in Crouch End, north London, each room spacious enough to be a studio in its own right. One room might be given over to You and Me, a programme for pre-school children that was anchored by a hamster called Alice and a crow; in another might be the set-up for Music Time, a show that involved lots of trickery, with Words and Pictures filmed along the corridor. They worked on productions as varied as The Sky at Night, animating constellations, to music videos and government information films.

There was a bohemian atmosphere to the place. Bura would appear through a dense cloud of smoke in the kitchen having just cooked a meal, and perform conjuring tricks, and they had two small dogs that would wander around but were trained not to disturb the sets. In the early 80s, the studio was moved to a disused church nearby (as well as one in Somerset), where the Eurythmics, Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, recorded Sweet Dreams upstairs, and which they later took over.

After Hardwick’s death in 2004, Bura became increasingly frail. Yet, in his late 80s, he made several appearances as Father Christmas at Hamleys toy shop in London, and was still entertaining and performing magic shows up to 2013. He was an upbeat, unforgettable savant who instinctively knew the way to go about creating effects and illusions.

He is survived by 19 nieces and nephews.

• Bob (Barnett) Bura, animator and puppeteer, born 25 September 1924; died 7 April 2018

• This article was amended on 14 May 2018. The sets of Camberwick Green and Trumpton were by Margaret and Andrew Brownfoot, not Brown as an earlier version said because of an editing mistake.