''Teeny Little Super Guy'' was an

animated short Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

featured on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

's ''

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational television, educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation, and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Worksh ...

''. The shorts featured a small animated man, the Teeny Little Super Guy, who resides in a live-action, regular-sized kitchen. He is a small, bald man who wears a yellow hat, a yellow long-sleeved shirt, red pants and black shoes. He also lives attached to a clear plastic cup. Robert W. Morrow described the shorts as including "parables of childhood conflict and striving."

Background

''Teeny Little Super Guy'' (TLSG) was created by animator Paul Fierlinger as a series of 13 installments for

's ''Sesame Street'' in 1982. The first ''Teeny Little Super Guy'' cartoon took two months to create. The series of segments were frequently shown on ''Sesame Street'' for several years. However, in the late 1990s the segments were shown sporadically (eventually not appearing on the show at all from 1997 to 2000). The segments reappeared briefly on ''Sesame Street'' in 2001 and a short clip (a part of the theme song only) was shown on ''Sesame Street's'' 35th anniversary special, ''The Street We Live On'' (2004). The shorts have not appeared on ''Sesame Street'' since 2002.

Production

The production for ''Teeny Little Super Guy'' started in May 1982 with Paul Fierlinger, Larry Gold, Jim Thurman, Tom Sloan, * * Stuart Horn, Ondre Oceanas, and Edith Zornow. In August 1982, the production for the shorts developed more seriously into filming the first two shorts. On February 17, 1984, the first short premiered on ''Sesame Street''. Composer Larry Gold wrote the theme song, with lyrics by Stuart Horn. Actor and longtime ''Sesame Street'' writer Jim Thurman performed all character voices. The production started filming in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

at Paul Fierlinger's house in the Philadelphia suburbs. It ran periodically on ''Sesame Street'' from 1984 until 2001. , one of the Teeny Little Super Guy cups, along with a picture of Fierlinger rotating the cups, was inside the public display case at the

Brooklyn Public Library The Brooklyn Public Library is the public library system of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is the sixteenth largest public library system in the United States by holding and the seventh by number of visitors. Like the two Brooklyn Publ ...

along with the other ''Sesame Street'' contributors. The display also includes another picture of the character with a yellow balloon. The plaque at the library mentions that "Teeny Little Super Guy," an instant hit two seasons later in 1984, was shot by stop-motion filmmaker Fierlinger using common household objects. Most of the animation was done by Tom Sloan along with Ondre Ocenas and Helena Fierlinger. In Episode 4196 of ''Sesame Street'',

Luis Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

was inspecting Leela's troubled washing machine. He managed to extract seven items, including the famous Teeny Little Super Guy. The filming was done primarily in Fierlinger's house and his studio next door. It was filmed using a 16mm

Bolex Bolex International S. A. is a Swiss manufacturer of motion picture cameras based in Yverdon located in Canton of Vaud, the most notable products of which are in the 16 mm and Super 16 mm formats. Originally Bol, the company was founded ...

with an electric motor drive giving a shutter speed of about 1/6 of a second. This allowed for higher

f-stop An f-number is a measure of the light-gathering ability of an optical system such as a camera lens. It is calculated by dividing the system's focal length by the diameter of the entrance pupil ("clear aperture").Smith, Warren ''Modern Optical ...

s and therefore having the 3D objects to be in better focus. Some of the scenes used early

video assist Video assist is a system used in filmmaking that allows filmmakers to view and distribute a video version of a take immediately after it is filmed. On set, the location where the assist is reviewed is called a ''video village''. Usage Originall ...

to see how the scene looked on a TV monitor.

Segments

Cast

Voices

* Jim Thurman performed all voices for the short

Music

*Theme and all incidental music - Larry Gold *Theme vocals - Essra Mohawk *The voice of the Teeny Little Super Guy - Jim Thurman *Lyrics - Stuart Horn

References

External links

*
Background on ''Teeny Little Super Guy''''Teeny Little Super Guy'' LiveJournal Community
* /www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdrBPJYfTC8&feature=player_profilepage "Baseball game"and /www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4iHcNxQprI "Cooperation Swing"episodes on Sesame Street's YouTube channel {{Sesame Street Characters Sesame Street characters Sesame Street segments 1980s English-language films