Designing a character without a face

How do you design a character that people feel connected to, without giving them the most obvious thing to connect with?

That was the question I found myself asking over and over again in the early days of sculpting what would eventually become our first collection, and while every part of the figure mattered — the stance, the proportions, the balance — it was the face that held me up the longest, not because I couldn’t decide what it should look like, but because I wasn’t sure it needed to be there at all.

At first, I did what everyone does: I drew the eyes, the mouth, the familiar structure that signals emotion and identity — and then I erased it, not once but several times, because each version felt too directed, too specific, like I was telling the viewer how to feel before they had a chance to interpret the figure for themselves, and that’s never been the kind of relationship I want people to have with the things I make.

I’ve come to believe that what makes a faceless character powerful isn’t just the mystery, but the openness — the invitation to pause and interpret rather than just consume — and in that space between detail and silence, something surprisingly human takes shape, something honest and strangely intimate, as if the figure is waiting for you to complete the story.

So while I may one day return to faces, to expressions carved and painted with intention, for now I’m staying with the quiet ones — the characters who say nothing, and in doing so, say exactly what they need to.