If you love to see Miss Piggy and Kermit grooving to “The Lambada,” or Bert, Ernie, the Count and Grover shaking their booties to Doja Cat’s “Say So” —and who doesn’t?— you need to check out artist Pietro Giliberti’s Instagram account immediately! That’s where you’ll see fluid, 2D animated version of the characters from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street jamming joyfully to perfect snippets of music. The mastermind behind these joyous, addictive spots is an industry veteran who was the lead animator for the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies and is currently head of animation at Toronto’s Spin VFX (Ballerina, Harold and the Purple Crayon and Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie), and he’s having a great time sharing his “Sesame/Muppets Art Grooves” with millions of fans on Instagram.
We were dying to find out more, so we were very excited when he answered a few of our burning questions via email just yesterday:
Pietro, congratulations on the success of your killer shorts! We need to know how this awesome enterprise began!
Pietro: My daughter let me know of an app called flips clip where you can animate frame by frame with an onion skin of your previous drawing. I studied classical animation at Sheridan in the ’90s and after transitioning into CG animation for my career, it became an escape into a passion for Sesame Street and The Muppet show, dance and music all doable on my phone. Creating straight to a media where you can create a short with audio in hours is a dream.
When did you post the first one and when did you know people are really loving them?
As soon as I animated a dance edit of Bert and Ernie to a nostalgic dance song I got a huge response from TikTok. After a few months I was at 110 K followers and over 4 million likes before I was hacked for my followers and lost everything. But, regardless of how much of a blow that was, I started right away on another account. The passion to keep creating these animations of characters that inspired my acting through animation was too strong to give up and I’ve been slowly building an audience of followers again.
It’s amazing how Jim Henson’s Muppets and the Sesame Street characters SUCH a natural for what you do and the popular songs you choose.
I grew up early ’80s where Sesame Street was on at least three times a day. Jim Henson’s ability to act through puppets stayed with me throughout my career. Emoting through gestures became a staple of my expression and animation was my strongest outlet. Being a shy person animating and performing with puppets was an escape I still use to this day with my latest posts.
How do you pick the music and the characters to feature?
Dance music from the ’80s and ’90s just has a vibe with these characters. I get the same feeling watching them dance as many do when watching relatives or good friends let loose out of their normal vibe. Watching an uncle break loose at a wedding was the most enjoyable thing to me so seeing Bert, Ernie, and any character that I learned from having fun and dancing just brings a good feeling.
Can you tell us about how you produce the animation….how long does each one take?
Each scene takes a few hours. From sketch to color then outline, on FlipaClip then retiming the scenes using the edit tools on TikTok to sync each scene to the beat of the audio I select.
I animate all the scenes on my phone using a pen with a rubber tip from the dollar store to draw the detail. What’s great is I can do this anywhere at any time so it’s become an escape from the high pressure client deliveries of CG animation for film and streaming shows I supervise animation for.
Have you heard from anyone at Sesame Street or The Henson Company?
This is a dream! Having Sesame Street or The Henson Company contact me or even the possibility to collaborate with a company that sparked my interest in performance would be a dream come true.
Biggest animation influences growing up?
Warner Bros cartoons, Bugs Bunny and the gang but of course the comedic timing and performance from Jim Henson’s creatures from Sesame Street to The Muppet Show… I think Henson’s slow turn and stare from his Muppets are still the most genius “takes” from a character reacting to someone or something.
What are you working on next?
I’m working on another Christmas edit based on the ‘80s hit “Last Christmas” by Wham!. Sesame Street and ’80s music strike a chord for anyone that grew up during this time. I’m also the head of animation at Spin VFX in Toronto where we are leading the industry in show work from Stranger things, among many other Netflix shows as well as film vfx, most recently heading the animation for Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado after finishing heading the animation for the SpongeBob SquarePants film The Sandy Cheeks Movie.
What is your take on the state of animation in 2025?
These are scary times with AI coming up with things we never thought possible. Yet knowing that AI can only go far enough to what has been created before. There are new creators with real human experience that AI will never get a hold of and as dazzling as AI is right now, it will never give a director the idea on the spot they have and capture what they want exactly, so there’s a place for it. But animation is still in the hands of the human observer. One that can mimic a performance depending on the multitude of creative ideas a director will have at any time that only an animator can channel to the screen. AI may be amazing to watch, but I would rather see something created from emotion, not equations.
Which clip has been the most popular and why?
My post showing a full dance club experience where Ernie is the DJ and the club takes place on Oscar’s trash can is at 1.5 million views. Oh, I also have mention Pedro Pascal reposted two of my animated spots — one being a parody of him and Nicolas cage in the car looking at each other meme. Both went viral until I was hacked for my followers. Still it was an awesome feeling seeing all the comments flow in saying “PEDRO PASCAL REPOSTED!!!! HES SUCH AN ERNIE!!!”
Best response to your work so far?
“AI could never create this.”
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about something that I love!
You can check out all of Pietro’s animated spots at instagram.com/pietrogiliberti.76/
