Today we’d like to introduce you to Deon Staffelbach

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

My name is Deon Staffelbach, and my artist name is Kachina! Kachina! I’m a designer and I create, customize and paint designer toys and make related artwork and collateral based on my toys and other designers creations.

Designer Toys are collectable pieces of art that are usually produced in resin or vinyl in small runs with unique characteristics differentiating them between runs. Prices can range from twenty-five dollars to several thousands of dollars for a vinyl or resin art toy depending on the artist and scarcity of the release.

I began my career as a Brand Designer, and I knew this was my path since I was about 11-12. That would have been about 1983, Sci-Fi was exploding at the time and the world was at the cusp of the digital age. Print advertisements relied heavily on airbrushed illustrations and photos that featured gleaming chrome and plastics, fantasy and sci-fi themes with the smoothest transitions of color that I had ever seen. Shortly thereafter I got an airbrush and started painting model kits and creating my own flat artwork and paintings. Today I rely heavily on these skills that I started learning when I was a young teenager.

After graduating from college in the mid ‘90s I spent several decades focused solely on a professional brand design and advertising career. In my personal design work I leaned heavily into a graphic artist role where I was creating contemporary illustrations and key visuals from a traditional art perspective. After one of my work associated passed away I realized that I wanted to create a body of work that was less ephemeral. I happened to see some other toy designers using the tools I loved as a youth, so I started to focus on sculpting and going back to painting with the airbrush and working on designer toys.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

I feel my road has been smooth because of my attitude and perspective. I never left my Brand Design career and those skills are my foundation. My design career gave me the ability to lean into a second career that is more art centric. A very special aspect of designing and painting designer toys for me as an adult is that it’s connected to some of the best times I had when I was a child and the skills I chose to develop early in life. I’m doing what I always loved to do, and so my attitude is usually very open to experimenting my way around, over or through any roadblocks I encounter. It can still be a process of following curiosity and learning from the magic of the process, more than insisting on expected outcomes.

As far as technical struggles the biggest hurdle for me going from a digital environment to a real media environment is there is no ‘Undo” command with real media. I’m sill learning how to “dig myself out of a hole” as far as mistakes are concerned. This makes me extra nervous when I near completion on a piece. So much work has gone into it at that point, one little error could ruin the entire piece.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

In 2019 I started making resin toys and had several releases before shifting my focus to producing and painting vinyl toys. By October of 2021 I had enough experience to join up with Elixir Toys to paint hundreds of popular vinyl toys in small batches and one off pieces that sold around the world and helped establish my brand and painting style in the community of artists and collectors. This in turn has provided many opportunities to work with several other great Toy Designers and painters.

Although people know me for my resin and vinyl toy releases, I believe most people recognize me for my painting style. The world of Designer Toys is fascinating because there are many collectors around the world who are interested in the artistry of painting and sculpting and how they converge into this pop culture medium. I’m honored that there are many people who have large collections of my work, and I’m very proud to have a place in many great collections alongside artists that I admire and look up to.

One thing that sets me apart from others is that I like to discuss my process and share information about painting technique with new painters. I think it’s great that other people want to pick up an airbrush and paint, so I try to be as informative and open source with my information as I can so more people can get involved. I also think that if we can elevate everyone’s skills as quickly as possible we’ll be breaking into new territory at a more rapid pace which is exciting to me, so I love to talk about process and technique and learn new painting techniques.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?

I have so many interests, I usually just focus on presenting myself in context to the person I am interacting with. So if you work with me as a Graphic Designer I usually don’t discuss being a Toy Designer or vice versa. I also have other interests like athletics and music. Not many people from my design world know that I have released several albums, I just prefer to compartmentalize my interests and keep them separated unless there’s an opportunity for an interesting cross over.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.KachinaKachina.com
• Instagram: @kachina_kachina
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KachinaKachinaToys

Image Credits

Painting by: @kachina_kachina
Toys and sculpts by:
@kachina_kachina
@elixirtoys
@martinheadrocks
@ extratruckestrial
@dollar_slice_bootlegs