Art Attack

The programme was originally a TVS production, devised by two TVS employees, Neil Buchanan and Tim Edmunds. Buchanan and Edmunds met each other at Southern Television in 1982, and worked together on No. 73 and Do It!.

The first Art Attacks were a strand within No. 73, and this segment proved so popular, Nigel Pickard, the executive producer of children's programming at TVS, green-lit the pilot. The Art Attack pilot was shot on location at a disused swimming pool in Gillingham, Kent in 1989, and the series began the following year.

Throughout its run, the series used theme-music composed by Mr Miller & Mr Porter,^[2] and inspired at Buchanan's suggestion by the hit Kenny Loggins song Danger Zone, from the 1986 film Top Gun.^[3]

When TVS lost its franchise, Edmunds and Buchanan bought the rights to the show and produced Art Attack through their company, The Media Merchants. The Media Merchants used STV Studios (then known as "SMG Productions"), as the ITV company to get the series onto the network: this was partly due to the fact that Nigel Pickard had moved to Scottish Television. In 1993, another ex-TVS employee, Peter Urie, set up a production management company, Television Support Services. Television Support Services managed and co-wrote all the Media Merchants productions.

For most of its run, the show was filmed at The Maidstone Studios, Maidstone, Kent. In 1998, The Media Merchants signed a production deal with Disney's Buena Vista Productions to produce a series of 104 episodes for Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, 26 each, and were branded under the Disney umbrella.^[4] These versions were recorded at Maidstone but on a smaller set than the original UK versions and mostly utilized stock footage from it. The respective local hosts displayed the artwork in between stages and explained what to do next, while footage of Buchanan's hands producing the artwork was used.^[5] As such, his Big Art Attacks were also retained, as was The Head, dubbed over by relevant local voice artists. The Disney deal was expanded in April 2000 with an additional forty episodes for Latin America and Brazil, split into twenty episodes each^[6] and an additional set of episodes in March 2002.^[7]

In March 2000, The Britt Allcroft Company (later Gullane Entertainment) purchased The Media Merchants for £14 million, with the series changing hands under corporate ownership for the first time.^[8] The show later went under a larger company, HIT Entertainment, after they purchased Gullane in September 2002.^[9][10] Despite the new ownership, the show continued to be produced under The Media Merchants.

In June 2006, ITV announced the closure of its in-house children's production unit and implemented a commissioning freeze, leading to some CITV shows being discontinued.^[11] Art Attack was one of the affected shows, with ITV announcing the show's cancellation in July 2007.^[12] Repeats of the show continued to broadcast on CITV until 30 May 2011 (in favour of Disney debuting the reboot on Disney Junior making it so that ITV lost the rights to broadcast Art Attack on CITV anymore), usually on weekend afternoons. HIT Entertainment closed down The Media Merchants after the cancellation, and the production team moved to The Foundation, producing the fifth series of Finger Tips and Mister Maker, which were both also recorded at The Maidstone Studios.

In November 2008, HIT Entertainment announced a new partnership with The Walt Disney Company Latin America to revive the Latin American version of the series. This revamped version would be produced in Argentina at the Non Stop Digital S.A. studios in Buenos Aires.^[13] In May 2011, Disney announced that the other international versions, including the UK, would also be revived; also announcing that they had purchased the property from HIT.^[14] These revived versions were formatted similar to the other Disney versions, where the local presenter (Jassa Ahluwalia for the UK version's first season) would narrate over footage of an artist creating the artwork. Local artist Alexiev Gandman was brought in to create the Big Art Attacks. The Head was replaced with a new character named Vincent Van Coconut, who was a talking palm tree. The revival was produced for Disney Junior, targeted towards a preschool audience. Makes based on Disney characters or franchises were also common in this version.

In December 2012, Buchanan was featured in a segment dedicated to the programme's original run in the one-off documentary special 30 Years of CITV: a 1992 episode was broadcast on the CITV channel shortly after the above was broadcast, as part of its "Old Skool Weekend" marathon.^{[citation needed]}

"The Head" was a puppet stone bust, based on Constantine the Great, who would humorously recap the steps needed to produce the last art piece made. After doing this, he would usually show his own creation of the previous Art Attack, most times however getting it comically wrong to his own sorrow or annoyance. However, on occasion, by accidentally doing part of the instructions incorrectly, he would create a different effect to that desired and be proud of his work. At other times he would tell jokes or make puns, particularly after the Big Art Attacks. In series 1, "The Head" was played by Jim Sweeney; in series 2, Andrew O'Connor; from series 3, 4 and 5, having been redesigned as a puppet, he was voiced and operated by Francis Wright. and from series 6 and 7, he was voiced and operated by productor Tim Edmunds. "The Head" did not appear in series 12 and 13, or in series 18 and 19.

In the revived series, The Head was replaced with a talking palm tree called "Vincent van Coconut", voiced by Tim Hibber. The name is a parody of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.

(Source: ITV/Hit Entertainment/BFI/Disney)^{[full citation needed]}

No DVD releases have been issued in the UK, except DVDs bundled with Art Attack books and DVDs which came free with newspapers. In India, Art Attack was released in three volumes by Disney DVD in 2010.

Many Art Attack books were also released by Dorling Kindersley.

Disney Channel and its various offshoots have broadcast Art Attack in most territories since the late 1990s, producing localised versions of the programme for many countries. In Australia, it was broadcast on ABC from July 1995 to October 1999; later episodes were broadcast on Disney Channel, with the revived series being broadcast on Disney Junior and on various channels of the Seven Network. In Canada, the programme has aired variously on TVOKids, Family Jr. and Knowledge Kids; in the United States, it was broadcast on WAM! during the 1990s. Art Attack has also aired in several other countries such as SABC2 in South Africa, ZBC in Zimbabwe, StarHub and Disney Channel in Singapore, TVB in Hong Kong, KTN in Kenya, Channel 33 in the United Arab Emirates, Fun Channel and Disney Channel in the Middle East and RTB in Brunei.

The original series, hosted by Neil Buchanan, has also been dubbed or subtitled in various non-English speaking countries, having been broadcast in various forms by Dragon Club in China, ET1 in Greece, Disney Channel in Taiwan and TRT in Turkey; in the Middle East, the Turkish version of the revived series has been subtitled into Arabic and broadcast by Jeem TV. In much of Latin America, the programme was broadcast on Discovery Kids during the 1990s, dubbed into Spanish and Portuguese. From 2000 to 2002, localised versions in Spanish and Portuguese were produced by Disney, which aired on Disney Channel Latin America and Disney Channel (Brazil). respectively, and hosted by Rui Torres; in later years, the British version was dubbed and broadcast by Disney in these territories. The Disney Channel (Portugal)^[15] version was hosted by Pedro Penim from 2002 to 2011,^[16] and Salvador Nery from 2011 to 2014.^[16] A Hindi version has been produced for India from 2011 to 2014, hosted by Gaurav Juyal; previously, the UK version was aired, dubbed in Hindi.^[17] A Scandinavian version of the program, hosted by Leon Jilber and produced in Swedish (with Danish and Norwegian dubs also available) initially aired on the Scandinavian version of Disney Junior, but has since moved to Disney Channel Scandinavia. An Italian version has been produced for Italy from 1998 to 2005 and from 2011 to 2014, hosted by Giovanni Muciaccia.

The series was also broadcast on armed forces television on BFBS (which broadcasts thousands of television series and films from the UK as well as a number of television series and films other countries) and its defunct channel SSVC Television (which went from 1982 to 1997) as part of their children's blocks Room 785 and Children's SSVC. The channels have aired the show in a number of countries including Germany, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gibraltar, Belize and Falkland Islands.

• SMart – another children's art television show, aired from 1994 to 2009.
• Art Ninja – another children's art television show aired since 2015.