[2][3] Chapman originates from Norfolk, East Anglia, though some of his formative years were spent in Basildon, Essex where he went to Nicholas Comprehensive School.
[5] He worked for Jim Henson International, designing characters related to the Muppets, before leaving to pursue a career in advertising.
While freelancing as an agency art director in the early 1990s, Chapman worked on his own creations, one of them being Bob the Builder, who was created after he spotted a JCB backhoe loader on a work site and thought they could bring it to life with cartoon eyes, which became the character Scoop (then named "Digger"), followed by other machines, and then thought the machines needed a human operator, which led to the creation of Bob, eventually showing it and his other creations to Peter Orton, executive chairman of HIT Entertainment,[1] and Orton, sensing potential in Bob the Builder, acquired the intellectual property rights and created a television show based on the property.
[1] Bob the Builder was produced at Manchester's HOT Animation studio, with Curtis Jobling's character and set designs.
In 2020, a new show from Chapman named Mighty Express was announced,[6] premiering on Netflix in September of the same year.