Sitting in front of a desktop and staring at a white or black keyboard can be so monotonous. This was probably what drove Tiny, an artisan, to design interesting and colorful keycaps that are not only a joy to watch but can make any mechanical keyboard stand out from the rest.
Tiny was hooked on to keycaps because she loved keyboards. She found out about customized keycaps on the internet and went about collecting them from artists online. However, she found their keycap art quite masculine, what with robots, skulls, and zombies. She wanted to give it a feminine touch and make them cute.
That’s how Tiny discovered cute characters to turn into keycaps. These include Baby Yoda, Kirby, burger, goose from Untitled Goose Game, and even waffles drenched in syrup, among others! It’s her skill that turns the tiny keycap into myriad characters with a charm and personality of their own.
In the beginning, Tiny sculpted these keycaps out of clay. She started getting commission work, once she started streaming her process on Twitch. As her confidence grew, she switched to resin casting and polymer. Being durable than clay, these could be mass-produced and sold in batches at a time.
Although Tiny considers the stuff that she does wacky and weird, her business acumen is right on the dot. Once her keycap business started showing signs of growing, she chucked her job as a software engineer and took up keycap making as a career. She also became a Twitch Partner and a rising star on TikTok, which gave her immense exposure on the internet. According to her, her keycaps are so popular that she can’t make enough for people who want her designs!
The process of creating keycaps is a tedious one. That’s why Tiny finds it difficult to meet the demand. However, she manages to find sponsors, usually mechanical keyboard companies such as Logitech, to promote their stuff. She is also approaching gaming companies, like Corsair, to make keycaps that relate to their game.
If you think this weird hobby is not popular, just have a look at Tiny’s Instagram page that has over 154,000 fans.
tiny keycap artisan