We are Marie and Pete. We are artists living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Tiny Grandma started when we wanted to make a series of cooking animations. Pete wanted a ninja puppet so it could dramatically cut things with swords. Marie decided that we know know nothing about ninjas and made her own mom but tiny.
A peek in the Philadelphia studio
Making Tiny Grandma
Tiny Grandma is 2 puppets. A muppet style puppet with dowels to operate her arms and a stop motion puppet made of metal ball and socket joints. For both puppets Marie models the heads and shoes in the computer and 3-D prints them in resin. She hand sews and embroiders her clothes. She designed her face and cut the features as vinyl stickers so they can move around. Her rosy cheeks are hand painted and we add a little gloss to her skin. Marie cuts her hair from black felt and carefully styles and glues it in place. Grandma’s hands are a in a constant state of trial and error. Marie has made silicone hands, 3-D printed hands, even felt hands. Tiny Grandma is, well, tiny- and her hands are even tinier- we are constantly trying to balance making them look good and making them articulate well. If you watch the videos carefully you can see all of our experiments in real time!
Tiny Grandma with some of her hands and heads
How tiny is she?
Marie’s original Tiny Grandma Sketch
A peek in the computer
Marie puppeteering Tiny Grandma (she’s very focused lol)
Marie and Real Tiny Grandma at golden hour. Pete as photobomb.
OG Tiny Grandma
A look at her stop motion bones