"The idea for the series came from the fact that we wanted to show the relationship of adults and children not in didactic, but in a comic form so that all the spectators could understand the feelings experienced by the characters," says the project's director, Denis Chervyatsov.
Masha was based on a real person, he says. In the 1990s, the project's artistic director, Oleg Kuzovkin, was on holiday when he saw a little girl on the beach.
The child was so ingenuous and open that she could easily walk up to a stranger and play chess with him or pick up his flippers and go swimming. However, after a few days, the vacationers began to hide from the girl – she was too active and intrusive.
The creators take storylines for episodes from their personal life. "Most of us have children," says Chervyatsov. "Even the animators copy the behavior of their own or friends' children, just like the scriptwriters do."