Hi, we're Tracy and Luis.
We're the duo behind Kaoz Studios, home of Tactical Kaoz and Kaoz Kitten. Our style in one line: different, detailed, creative, and a little chaotic.
The whole Kaoz crew: Luis, Tracy, and our six Sphynx cats, our full-time "unqualified staff".
How it all started
Like a lot of 3D printing stories, ours began during the 2020 lockdown with a single Ender 3. Printing other people's designs got old fast, so we started making our own. The very first thing we ever designed was a cat butt cookie cutter. We threw it on Mercari as a joke and sold about 15 of them. Then came Etsy, with fifteen to twenty sales a day, and Amazon after that. All because of a quirky cat butt cookie cutter.
The cookie cutter that started it all.
Two designers, one brand
Luis and Tracy don't share the same design style, and that's the point. We never try to match each other. He does his thing, Tracy does hers, and we cheer on whatever wild idea the other one makes next. Most days we sculpt in ZBrush, and sometimes one of us sees a random animal and disappears into it for hours.
That's where the realistic articulated flexi animals come from: lifelike fish, snakes and lizards with moving joints. They are fun to hold, fun to fidget with, and made to be collected.
Our print farm
Our print farm grew from one Ender 3 to a fleet of Prusa and Bambu printers, with fifteen to twenty running at any given time. Every critter is printed right here by us.
A modern love story
We met on Xbox eleven years ago, and we've been side by side ever since: first as gaming buddies, then best friends, and now building a life and a business together. During COVID we each walked away from unrelated careers (cosmetology and Toyota sales) to build Kaoz Studios from scratch. Now we design, work and game side by side almost around the clock, and we know how lucky we are that this crazy little adventure became our actual life.
We travel a lot too, and our best ideas usually show up when we're furthest from our desks. We don't want to be one of 500 people making the same thing. We want you to look at something and say, "Yep, that's Kaoz."
Ready to meet the critters? Shop all critters
Featured in the Thangs Designer Stories blog: read the original interview.