In November of 2024, a kappa with a bowl of ramen in its head and a fashion-forward moth fairy from an elegant kingdom charmed fans at the annual Las Vegas collectibles and pop-art gathering, DesignerCon. The vinyl art figures, featured in the debut line from collectibles company Kaleidos Creative, also marked the start of an exciting new chapter in a shared 11-year toymaking tale for two of the studio’s design directors, DigiPen graduates Anna Corcoran and Nena Ijiomah.
The duo’s toy story first began when they met as aspiring young artists in DigiPen’s BFA in Digital Art and Animation program. Whether in class or at their mutual friend’s regular game nights, the two crossed paths often. “The BFA program was so small, you ended up knowing everyone,” Ijiomah, who graduated with Corcoran in 2013, recalls. Hot off the heels of her senior animated short film, Super Secret, Ijiomah had just finished her degree when she discovered an unexpected opportunity through a DigiPen friend’s job-hunting Facebook group. A project manager from Funko, the pop culture collectibles giant currently based in Everett, Washington, shared a job post in the group that would soon find Ijiomah applying the skills she honed in her 3D sculpting ZBrush course to design toy figurine models.
“When I started at Funko, the 3D artists were basically responsible for all 3D tasks, so we learned a lot about the 3D printing and molding process in toymaking,” Ijiomah says. “I developed a pipeline for myself that could get me results that I am satisfied with as quickly as possible. I don’t have the ‘good enough’ gene, so making work that I can stand behind is always a priority for me.” Immediately impressed with her talents and looking to add another 3D sculptor to the team, the company brought Corcoran on board too just a few months later, thanks to Ijiomah’s recommendation.
The jump was just as much of a learning process for Corcoran as well, so the two turned to each other for support as they got their bearings. “Entering Funko, I had a fairly good foundation in ZBrush but no knowledge of sculpting for physical product,” Corcoran says. “My first years at Funko were focused on figuring that part out and sharing that knowledge amongst ourselves.” As their skills in toymaking grew together, so did their opportunities to work with huge pop culture franchises, transforming beloved characters into Funko’s signature dot-eyed, jumbo-headed “POP!” figures.
“My project highlights were definitely working on properties that shaped my childhood and teenage years, including Lord of the Rings, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, and Xena: Warrior Princess,” Corcoran says. Toying around, Ijiomah even got to cross over into the film industry for one project, leading design on Funko’s Dark Crystal “ReAction” toy line. “I got to be a part of the development team for Netflix’s Dark Crystal series, so I had the opportunity to see early cuts of a few episodes and a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff,” she says. When she wasn’t turning Jim Henson’s fantastical puppets into figurines, Ijiomah also got a chance to visit the puppets at LAIKA Studios alongside Corcoran during a Funko field trip to the famed stop-motion animation producers behind Coraline and ParaNorman. “I will always remember that trip fondly,” Corcoran says.
As the years passed, the number of 3D sculptors working at Funko grew considerably. Being some of the senior-most members of the team, Corcoran and Ijiomah took on more leadership responsibilities, working with their fellow sculptors to advance them technically and creatively while ensuring their new product designs were consistent with Funko’s distinct brand style. Although the two enjoyed the shift into leadership and their continued work with pop franchises, after nearly a decade at Funko, both independently began thinking about what might come next.
“I was part of the development team for the original Funko IP series Wetmore Forest, which was a lot of story development and character design. Both are things I love to do that I rarely got to do [while] sculpting toys,” Ijiomah says. Similarly craving a return to original work, Corcoran decided to make a break from the company in early 2023. “I left to focus on myself and who I was as an artist,” she says. By the end of the year, Ijiomah had done the same.
They weren’t alone. Around the same time, the duo’s boss and close collaborator over the last decade, Benjamin Butcher, left to forge a new creative path as well. Setting up shop just down the road in Monroe, Washington, the former Funko senior vice president of creative founded Kaleidos Creative, an artist collective and studio with a mission to bring a “new perspective to the world of collectibles.”
“Our original ideas come from the heart and soul of their creators,” Butcher wrote in the company’s 2024 creative launch message. “Our artists are the company, and we can’t wait to introduce you to the worlds we’ve created.”
As Butcher began building a small, creator-driven crew, Corcoran and Ijiomah were naturally at the top of the list. “When Ben reached out about Kaleidos Collective, it seemed like a no-brainer for me,” Corcoran says. “Ben was such an incredible leader to the creative team at Funko, so I was delighted to work together again!” Serendipitously, Ijiomah had just begun looking for new job openings when Butcher reached out as well at the start of 2024. “The time felt right,” Ijiomah says. The two came aboard as design directors in February 2024, joining a nine-person team of industry vets from Disney, Pixar, LucasArts, Paramount, Bento Box, and Penguin Random House.
With November’s DesignerCon as a launch target, the group spent the next nine months designing its original debut collectible line. Instead of starting from film, TV, or comic book IPs for reference, Corcoran and Ijiomah were thrilled to start from their own imaginations instead.
“At Kaleidos, I design about half of the projects I work on,” Ijiomah says. “I feel much more connected to the work I do here even when I’m not the designer, [because] I still have more involvement in the building of the line.”
In a break from their specialized 3D sculpting focus at Funko, Kaleidos has found Corcoran and Ijiomah taking part in everything from story and design pitches to packaging and even costing. “Like a Swiss army knife, our position entails a wide range of responsibilities and requires us to be flexible,” Corcoran says. “At Kaleidos we get to play in all aspects of figure creation.”
When it came to her first Kaleidos project, Ijiomah decided to dial back a few years for inspiration. In Japanese folklore, the beaked, cucumber-loving water deities known as kappa draw power from a bowl-shaped indent on top of their heads — an indent which must always remain filled with water to prevent them from becoming severely weakened. In 2018, right after her original character design opportunity at Funko for their monster-filled Wetmore Forest IP, Ijiomah imagined a kappa character of her own with a soupy backstory. When a kappa tripped while out on a morning stroll and spilled its water, rendering itself immobile, a child in the middle of lunch ran to the rescue and filled the kappa’s head bowl with her ramen, thus creating the legendary “Kappa Ramen.”
“The kappa was a figure I had designed back in 2018 and was going to produce independently, but COVID kind of killed the project,” Ijiomah says. “When we were deciding what we wanted to make for our [Kaleidos] designer series, I knew I wanted to finally get this little guy made.” Clutching a cucumber, the very green figurine debuted alongside an exclusive “Spicy” orange and red DesignerCon color variant at the November expo. Also cast in warm hues, Corcoran’s vinyl art figure collaboration with fellow design director Meg Dunn, “Atlas,” debuted alongside Kappa Ramen with a similarly vibrant backstory, taken this time from their original “Moth Fairies” universe.
“I love fantasy themes and beautiful designs, so it was really cool to create something that reflected that,” Corcoran says. Hailing from the Kingdom of Lepithria, Atlas is a fashionable moth fairy with a look inspired by Art Deco and the real-life atlas moth. “Honestly, seeing the figure in person was quite emotional,” Corcoran says of Atlas’ DesignerCon debut. “While it’s one thing to create something based on an existing property, it’s a completely different feeling creating entirely from your own imagination.”
The two say the transition from Funko to directing their own original collectibles at Kaleidos has been a seamless one, thanks in large part to the long, shared art-making journey they started together at DigiPen. “Our graduating year at DigiPen was constantly sharing knowledge and helping each other, and that is the foundation the Funko sculpting team grew on,” Corcoran says. Still sharing knowledge over a decade later, it’s the same foundation their exciting creative work at Kaleidos grows on now — work that still surprises Ijiomah sometimes. “Most of my career has been sculpting in ZBrush, which I only took one [DigiPen] class for,” she says. “You never know which skill you learn will end up being your everyday.”