Early Life and Career: Hong Kong to Belgium
Kasing Lung was born in Hong Kong in 1972 and moved to Belgium as a young man to study art. He spent a significant portion of his early career in Europe, working as a commercial illustrator for advertising agencies and publishing clients. This European experience had a profound effect on his visual vocabulary — exposure to Northern European picture book illustration, specifically the Scandinavian tradition of depicting forest creatures, folk spirits, and mythological beings, became a defining influence on his later character work.
During his time in Belgium and the broader European commercial art market, Lung developed technical mastery in detailed illustration — intricate line work, rich texture, and a command of narrative scene-building that sets his work apart from illustrators trained primarily in the East Asian commercial art tradition. He also developed an appreciation for the tradition of artist-designed objects and limited-edition prints, which would later inform his approach to the designer toy market.
Lung eventually returned to Hong Kong and established his practice there, balancing commercial illustration work with personal artistic projects. The Monsters universe began as a personal project — an attempt to create a self-authored world rather than illustrating other people's ideas. The picture books were a vehicle for the characters he had been developing privately for years.
Creating The Monsters: Labubu's Origins
Lung began publishing 'The Monsters' picture book series in 2015 through his own studio. The books depicted a forest world inhabited by creatures with names like Labubu, Tycoco, Zimomo, and Spooky — each with a distinct personality and visual identity. Lung's design approach for these characters was rooted in what he has described as finding the 'spirit' of each creature: what emotional quality should this being embody, and how does the visual design express that quality?
For Labubu specifically, Lung designed around the concept of hidden gentleness — a creature that looks frightening (nine sharp teeth, wild ears, wide unblinking eyes) but is fundamentally kind. This narrative subversion — the monster that isn't monstrous — is a recurring theme in Northern European folklore, and Lung's academic familiarity with that tradition informed how he resolved the visual tension between cute and scary. The nine-tooth grin, which might read as threatening in isolation, reads as joyful in the full context of Labubu's wide eyes and compact rounded body.
The picture books established detailed lore for each character — their relationships, habitats, and stories within the forest world. This depth of character development is unusual for a figure that would later be sold primarily as a collectible, and it's part of what distinguishes Labubu from other designer toys: there's actual narrative behind the design, which gives collectors something to connect with beyond pure aesthetics.
The Pop Mart Partnership and Commercial Breakthrough
Kasing Lung's partnership with Pop Mart, beginning around 2019, brought The Monsters characters into physical form at scale. Pop Mart provided manufacturing expertise, global retail infrastructure, and the blind box format that transformed niche artist collectibles into mainstream consumer products. Lung retained significant creative control over the character designs — official Labubu series maintain the character's core visual DNA even when dressed in wildly different collaboration outfits.
The partnership has been commercially transformative for both parties. For Pop Mart, Lung's IP diversified their character portfolio away from the conventional cute-human-figure aesthetic and introduced a creature aesthetic that differentiated Pop Mart in global markets. For Lung, Pop Mart's manufacturing and distribution capabilities allowed his characters to reach an audience orders of magnitude larger than picture books alone could reach.
Lung has been publicly candid about his initial surprise at Labubu's commercial success — in interviews, he has described the experience of seeing his characters on people's bags and in stores worldwide as genuinely unexpected. He continues to produce picture books and personal artwork alongside the Pop Mart collaboration, maintaining the fine-art dimension of his practice while the commercial side operates at global scale.
Artistic Influences and Legacy
Lung's primary acknowledged influences include Swedish illustrator Elsa Beskow (best known for 'Children of the Forest'), Norwegian folk art traditions, and the broader Northern European picture book tradition of depicting nature spirits and forest creatures as beings with personality and inner life. He has also cited the aesthetic of traditional Chinese woodblock printing as an influence on his use of flat color fields within detailed outlines — a cross-cultural technical hybridization that gives his work its distinctive quality.
In the designer toy world, Lung's influence has been significant. Before Labubu, the market was dominated by human-figure IPs with relatively simple designs (Molly, Sonny Angel, Be@rbrick). Labubu demonstrated that creature-character IPs with complex design histories could achieve mass-market commercial success, opening a design direction that other artists and brands have subsequently followed.
Kasing Lung's career represents a model that many artist-collectors find inspiring: a dedicated commercial illustrator who built a private creative universe over decades, eventually finding global recognition for that personal work rather than for his commercial output. The editions available at Voxelyo.com — Duck Bubu, Snow Wing Bubu, Angel Bubu, and Pink Fang Bubu — each carry forward the visual language Lung developed in those early picture books: the specific ear shape, the nine teeth, the wide-set eyes that see everything and judge nothing.