The tagline for the Tiny Chef Show is, “A Tiny Stop-Motion Cooking Show For Humans Of All Ages.” This nascent series is a stop motion cooking show where an herbivore named The Tiny Chef creates the world’s tiniest dishes from his rooftop garden tree stump. According to their site , “Every episode will feature the Tiny Chef making a new recipe and learning subtle life lessons along the way.”
We spoke with show Creator and Executive Producer, Rachel Larsen. She told us about the inception of the project, which would be based around a, “Real tiny herbivore chef creature who absolutely loves cooking and has a wonderfully optimistic and kind spirit…Basically Julia child mixed with Pee Wee’s Playhouse and a sprinkle of Mr. Roger’s soul.”
Larsen spoke with us about the amazingly spread out, yet tight process of their production right now: “Production at the moment is happening in a shed outside the house I’m renting in New Zealand. I’m working with the tiny chef team remotely. Matt Hutchinson, who does The Chef’s voice, records himself singing and talking in the chef voice from Portland, Oregon.
“I pick a tune or track and animate The Chef with a vague idea of what I’m after and think of ideas as I go. Ozi Oshiro does post work on the videos in London (she came out to New Zealand for a month and helped me light the set and get animation up and running) then sends back to me. Adam Reid and I are writing the scripts together for hopefully what will be a full-length show. So right now we are four people doing whatever we can from where we are!”
Like many animators, this is not the only task in Larsen’s life either. “The biggest challenge is trying to do this while working a full-time job and learning so many new things very quickly. My main wish for the Tiny Chef show is to be able for us to dedicate all our time and energy so we can properly expand the world and create even more magic. And a lot more sleep would be nice.”
To that end, she said, “I’m moving back to Portland and going to work on Tiny Chef full time and try to get a network deal to make a full-length show. Ultimately, I would love to expand the Tiny Chef world as far as I can so looking forward to working on this full time with my team.” Given the show’s play on juxtapositions of size, and charming voice and mood of the host, we have no doubt this will happen for the team.