The subject of my work is the character. Not a tool for telling stories, but a standalone artistic object that holds within it a feeling, an event, a person, a state.

I create characters every day — in drawings and in three dimensions. I work with wood, cast polyurethane, metal, porcelain, and fabric. Beneath every character lies a foundation: a daily practice, a written story, a legend. Sometimes a character becomes the vessel of its own story; sometimes it remains a purely aesthetic object — but always a meaningful one.

I'm drawn to minimalist forms: simple shapes, soft lines, muted color, warm matte surfaces. Rhythm, balance, and silhouette are more expressive to me than detail. I'm inspired by old animation, Soviet design, children's books, forgotten objects, and images that seem to come from another time.

My figures are deliberately small, 7–15 centimeters. They aren't meant to exist in isolation: they live, are exhibited, and gather into small collections. For collectors — as for me — this is a way of engaging with contemporary art.

My work has appeared in books on character design such as Dot Dot Dash, Toy Art 2.0, Art Toys, and We Are Indie Toys, and has been published in Design Bureau and Clutter Magazine. Several pieces are in the permanent collection of the Strong National Museum of Play in the United States.

Alongside my own work, I research the culture of designer toys, art toys, and sofubi. I make videos about artists and series, and lecture for companies and educational and cultural institutions.

Sergey Safonov — artist and character designer

In 2005 I opened Lunohod-1 — the first designer toy store in Russia, which quickly became a gathering point for the entire local scene: exhibitions, custom shows, in-house releases. In 2010 I closed it to focus on my own characters.

Today Lunohod-1 is returning as the Character Office — a studio that helps artists take a character from idea to object. Concept development, producing, production, and release.

I've been inside this scene since the early 2000s — as an artist, a collector, and a researcher. Everything happening in contemporary culture, I look at through the lens of the character.

Sergey Safonov
Moscow, 2026

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