A young author and animator is appealing for help turning his idea to teach children about wildlife into a reality.

Carshalton man James Trimm has designed a children's book he hopes will help young people learn more about animals around the world.

Mr Trimm, who studied animation at university, used his skills to come up with a main character - Jolly Jim the explorer, who goes around the  world meeting animal characters also designed by Mr Trimm.

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James Trimm with Jolly Jim the bumbling explorer

The 22-year-old has used Toy Story-style 3D animation to generate the characters for Jolly Jim's A-Z of Amazing Animals, which involves Jolly Jim meeting a different animal on each page and finding out more about them.

Each animal has taken an item of Jim's exploration equipment and it is the reader's job to help him find it and figure out what country he is in by unscrambling hidden letters on the page.

Now Mr Trim has started a campaign to raise the money to publish the book through crowdsourcing website Kickstarter. He aims to raise £4,000 to cover the cost of producing the book, printing it and distributing it. People who donate will be able to get benefits including signed copies of the book, framed and signed artwork and more depending on how much they donate.

Mr Trimm said: "I did animation at university and as part of the course I got into visual design and had to draw sketches of characters from different angles. One of the first characters I came up with was a hippo.

"I did about five more and then I came up with the idea of doing one for every letter of the alphabet and wrote poems to go with the characters.

"In the end it probably took about two-to-three months of solid work to get to this stage, and that's been working flat out. 

"I've been in contact with printers and the bulk of the cost is lithographic printing - and that's where the Kickstarter comes in."

Mr Trimm, who went to the University of Creative Arts, hopes to raise £4,000 but if he raises more he said he will include stickers, improve his plans for the front page and donate 100 copies to UK libraries.

To donate to Mr Trimm's project and find out more, visit jimtrim.co.uk