The Starfinders Story
Behind the scenes of our first Christmas Advent Calendar
Written by Soon Cho / October 5, 2024 / Profile photo: Mini puzzle boxes from Starfinders
There is a special kind of magic in counting down to Christmas.
Opening one small surprise each day, watching lights appear around the neighborhood, and feeling the anticipation grow as Christmas draws closer - it brings back that childhood feeling of waking up excited because something wonderful might happen.
That feeling inspired Starfinders, our first Christmas Advent Calendar: a story told through 24 mini puzzles and one final surprise puzzle for Christmas Day.
I’m Soon, founder of SOONNESS, an independent puzzle brand that brings art, storytelling, and playful experiences to puzzlers around the world. After creating our Halloween Advent Puzzle, Ghoul Gang, I wanted to capture that same sense of discovery through a magical Christmas adventure.
This is the story of our first Christmas Advent Calendar, created in collaboration with Japanese illustrator Itoi Yuki - and how a small idea grew into an entire Christmas world.
The Beginning
The earliest idea for Starfinders was a story about a missing star. In a quiet, snow-covered village, the grand Christmas tree has lost its light. Pip and Tinsel set off across a magical island to find the lost fragments of the Starlight Star before Christmas arrives.
I developed the central story and its two main characters Pip and Tinsel. From there, Yuki and I met online many times to expand it together - discussing the places they would visit, the characters they would meet, and how their adventure could unfold through 25 connected puzzles.
When I first shared the concept with Yuki, she was excited not only by the story, but by the idea of combining an Advent Calendar, puzzles, packaging, ornaments, and daily surprises into one experience.
“An Advent Calendar is already exciting because you open something new each day,” Yuki said. “But this one also has puzzles, a story, and many surprises hidden in the boxes. I thought it could become a very special gift - one that lets people enjoy the entire time leading up to Christmas.”
Even the names Pip and Tinsel became part of the magic. They began as temporary names I used while developing the story, but Yuki felt they suited the characters so naturally that we kept them. To her, “Pip” sounded light and playful - like a hop, step, or skip along the path - while “Tinsel” felt sparkling and bright, just like the stars they were searching for.
Meet the Artist: Itoi Yuki
As soon as I imagined a cute and magical Christmas setting, I knew Itoi Yuki would be the perfect artist for it.
Yuki is a Japanese illustrator known for colorful, welcoming scenes filled with people, creatures, and tiny stories. Working primarily with colored pencils and alcohol markers, she brings the familiar and the imaginary together with a gentle sense of warmth and magic.
Starfinders is our third puzzle collaboration, following Big Restaurant and Hygge. Big Restaurant showed Yuki’s gift for playful storytelling through small details, while Hygge captured the comfort of quiet, everyday moments.
Photo above: Big Restaurant puzzle (left), Hygge Puzzle (right, photo by @puzzledbykate)
After our first collaboration, I met Yuki in person at her exhibition in Tokyo in early 2023. I happened to be in the city visiting a friend and doing research, and I was thrilled to see her beautiful work in person. She was not only an amazing illustrator, but also a kind and wonderful human being.
Many tiny illustrations were hanging on the exhibition walls, and I remember thinking they would make delightful mini puzzles. At the time, SOONNESS only made 1,000-piece puzzles. When I later began planning a mini-puzzle Advent experience, I thought of her immediately.
From a Story to a Map
One of Yuki’s earliest ideas was to turn the outer box into a treasure map.
Before illustrating the individual scenes, she imagined the island Pip and Tinsel would travel across: a colorful place with a Christmas-tree-shaped landscape, a rainbow sea, snowy villages, workshops, forests, caves, and mysterious destinations waiting to be discovered.
The map appeared in her earliest rough sketches and remained at the heart of the design.
“I wanted people to look at the map and wonder, ‘What kinds of places are here, and what stories are waiting for us?’” Yuki explained. “Then, when they open the box, they discover all these little boxes containing the stories from the map. I thought that surprise would be fun.”
For Yuki, the map was more than packaging. It helped her understand how the locations related to one another and imagine Pip and Tinsel truly moving across the island.
Filling the World with Characters
Once the map was established, we began filling it with inhabitants.
Yuki read through the story we had developed and imagined who might live in each location. The finished adventure includes gingerbread characters, toy makers, gift wrappers, fairies, snowmen, a yeti, and many others.
Because puzzlers would meet someone new almost every day, she gave each character a distinct shape, color palette, and personality.
Some familiar faces from Yuki’s earlier work also found their way into Starfinders. Fairies and a yeti from her long-running picture-book project, Chibi Story World, appear as if they have stepped through a little doorway connecting her previous creations with this Christmas island.
“I felt as though I was creating a parallel world where the characters and places I had drawn before could connect with Starfinders,” she said.
Designing the Daily Surprise
We wanted every day of the Advent experience to bring a genuine moment of discovery.
Each of the 24 mini puzzles contains 56 pieces, but the finished artwork is not shown on the outside of its box. Instead, Yuki designed a small symbol that offers a clue about the day’s destination without revealing the full scene.
The symbols came from recognizable shapes or motifs within each illustration - just enough to make someone wonder, “Where are we going today?”
“They are like little hints from the story,” Yuki explained.
The boxes can also hang on a Christmas tree, so each one needed to feel like a tiny present and look beautiful both on its own and as part of the complete collection. Displayed together, their colors, patterns, symbols, strings, and metallic foil details become a set of 24 ornaments.
The same anticipation guided the outer packaging. Before the first puzzle was even opened, Yuki wanted it to inspire one immediate thought:
“This is going to be the best Christmas!”
We wanted opening Starfinders to feel like receiving one enormous Christmas present before the puzzling had even begun.
Creating Art for Puzzlers
Although Starfinders tells one continuous story, every chapter also needed to work as a satisfying puzzle.
As Yuki created the artwork, I shared feedback from a puzzler’s perspective - suggesting where an area might need another pattern, color, object, or detail to make it more enjoyable to assemble. We also worked to give each day its own mood while keeping all 25 scenes visually connected.
"I paid particular attention to a sense of temperature: the excitement of waiting for Christmas and the comforting feeling of stepping into a warm place after being outside in the cold, Yuki said. Some places feel cool, some feel freezing, some feel warm, and others have fresh, pleasant air. I wanted to create a world that makes you feel as though you are truly there."
There are also small connections to follow along the way. One is Pip’s bag, a gift from Santa. As Pip and Tinsel collect the fragments of the Starlight Star, the contents of the bag gradually change.
Without revealing too much, Yuki recommends keeping an eye on it from the beginning to the end.
More Than 25 Illustrations
Yuki has created many illustrated products, including stationery, picture books, and packaging. But Starfinders asked her to work in a completely different way.
Instead of completing one image and adapting it into a product, she created 25 illustrations that form a single narrative. She had to consider not only what happened within each picture, but also how it followed the previous day, what it suggested about the next, and how someone might feel opening the puzzles one at a time throughout December.
The characters, map, ornament boxes, outer packaging, and illustrations all needed to feel like parts of the same place.
“It felt less like drawing a single picture and more like creating an entire world,” Yuki said. “It was almost like completing a whole picture book.”
Every illustration was drawn with colored pencils and markers. Building each image by hand, one small object and layer of color at a time, required enormous patience.
The greatest challenge was the final 300-piece puzzle, which brings together many of the people, creatures, and objects encountered along the way. Yuki loved drawing it, but completing such a detailed gathering demanded long hours and steady concentration. She returned to her desk each day and continued little by little.
“When I finished it, I was so happy that I cried,” she said. “I felt as though I had finally reached the end together with Pip and Tinsel.”
Yuki is proud that she completed such an ambitious project, it became such an important work for her that she could not help crying when she finished it.
The Soundtrack Behind Starfinders
A project this large requires something to keep you company. For Yuki, it was the radio.
She spent so many hours coloring at her desk that she eventually finished every episode of her regular programs. She then began listening to new podcasts from their very first episodes all the way to the latest ones.
“That made me realize just how much time I had spent on this work,” she said.
Spoken programs were too distracting while she planned compositions, so during those stages she switched to music. Yuki became interested in K-pop during the pandemic and found energy in the different concepts, performances, album covers, and music videos. Her favorite group is TWICE.
Their music helped carry her through the longest days of production and gave her an extra push whenever the finish line still felt far away.
Built Through Conversation
Starfinders was shaped through many online meetings.
Yuki and I discussed the story, characters, composition, layouts, color relationships, puzzling experience, and packaging. Color was especially important to both of us. We wanted every illustration to feel connected while still offering something fresh each day.
While Yuki carefully worked through the artwork, I tested many physical prototypes for the Advent Calendar: the construction, box sizes, piece counts, ornament function, materials, printing, and finishing details.
The process took longer than either of us initially imagined. There were revisions, technical challenges, and periods when other work made it difficult for Yuki to progress as quickly as she hoped. But I believed the project needed time to become what we had envisioned.
Yuki remembers that patience as an important part of our collaboration.
“Soon always looked very carefully at my artwork and clearly explained what could make it better,” she said. “Even when the work took a long time, she continued to wait and allowed me to care about every detail until the end.”
For me, the project was also an exercise in trust. I brought the central story and product concept; Yuki gave them atmosphere, inhabitants, color, and warmth. Her imagination transformed a route on a map into a place that feels as though it might truly exist.
Starfinders Comes to Life
After nearly two years of sketches, color studies, artwork, samples, waiting, and prototypes, seeing the finished product was emotional for both of us. We felt relieved, proud, and deeply fulfilled when it finally came to life.
Yuki’s first reaction was simple: “So cute! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
The ornament boxes are decorative on the outside, but each holds a complete mini puzzle and another chapter of the story. Yuki imagined how it might feel to experience this as a child: seeing the ornaments on the family Christmas tree, opening one each day, discovering a puzzle inside, and slowly realizing that every scene belongs to a larger adventure.
“I think I would look forward to tomorrow every single day,” she said.
That is exactly what we hope Starfinders creates: not only 25 completed puzzles, but 25 moments of anticipation.
The Journey to Christmas
Yuki hopes puzzlers will feel as though they are traveling beside Pip and Tinsel. With every box comes a new question: Where will we go today? Who will we meet next?
More than anything, she hopes the experience brings back the feeling of waiting for Christmas as a child - the belief that tomorrow holds something exciting and that a little more magic is still on its way.
When the final puzzle is opened, we hope you will look back at the places you visited, the characters you met, and the clues you collected - and feel that you truly reached the end with Pip and Tinsel.
A journey made from an idea, creativity, dedication, patience, imagination, and many small pieces of details. Just like Pip & Tinsel in this story: a journey to find the light.
You can learn more about the artists here.