If you’ve spent any time in the flexi-print corner of MakerWorld, you’ve already run into their work, even if you didn’t know the names behind it. Valeria & Mattia are an Italian duo who turned an evenings-and-weekends hobby into Cute Flexi Maker, the no-code tool that lets anyone design their own articulated, print-in-place creatures, and soon to launch crowdfunding for ClickerFactory, a second tool aimed at a completely different kind of printable object. I reached out for a written Q&A to find out how a couple making flexi animals as a side project ended up building actual software, and what’s coming next. Their answers are below, in full.
Who Are Valeria & Mattia?
For people who’ve never met you outside your posts, who are you, and how did the two of you end up designing together?
We’re Valeria and Mattia, a couple from Italy. We both have creative and technical backgrounds, and we share a passion for making things. A few years ago, we started designing 3D printable models together as a hobby, mostly during evenings and weekends after work.
What began as a fun side project quickly turned into a real business. Today, we create digital 3D models, run online communities, and develop tools that help makers create their own personalized designs.
What were you doing before Cute Flexi Maker? Was 3D design always the plan, or did it come out of left field?
Before Cute Flexi Maker, we were primarily focused on creating and selling printable 3D models through Patreon, Thangs, and other platforms.
3D design wasn’t exactly our original plan. Like many people in this industry, we started because we enjoyed creating things and solving problems. Over time, our hobby became more serious, our community grew, and we realized there was an opportunity to build something larger.
How do you divide the work? Is one of you more the “idea person” and the other the “make it real” person, or does it not break down that neatly?
There is definitely some overlap, but generally speaking, Valeria is the creative force behind most of our designs and artistic direction, while Mattia focuses more on systems, business strategy, and community management.
That said, we discuss almost every important decision together. Most of our projects start as a conversation and evolve through dozens of iterations before becoming a finished product.
The spark behind Cute Flexi Maker
When asked what actually sparked Cute Flexi Maker, Valeria & Mattia gave a clear and thoughtful answer.
What was the actual moment CFM clicked for you? Was there a specific print, request, or frustration that made you think “we should just build a tool for this”?
The idea came from seeing the same request over and over again.
People loved our flexi animals, but they wanted their own versions: different species, different names, different accessories, different themes. Every customization required manual design work from us, which simply wasn’t scalable.
The tipping point came during Christmas. We kept receiving the same request over and over again: “Can you put a Santa hat on this animal?” At some point, we asked ourselves: why are we manually creating every variation when we could build a tool that lets users do it themselves?
That question became Cute Flexi Maker.
You’ve said the creative work on Patreon is the heart of what you do and CFM is “complementary.” Was there ever a worry that building an app would pull you away from the community side you’d already built?
Absolutely. One of our biggest concerns was becoming “software developers” and losing the creative side that attracted people to our work in the first place. We never wanted that to happen.
Our community and our creative process remain the core of what we do. Cute Flexi Maker exists because of that community, not instead of it. We still design new models, interact with subscribers, run polls, and build things people ask for. In many ways, CFM allows us to serve our community better rather than replacing that relationship.
Did you expect the response to be this big, or has the scale of it surprised you?
It definitely surprised us. We believed there was interest, otherwise we wouldn’t have invested the time and resources required to build it. But the speed at which people embraced the concept exceeded our expectations.
The enthusiasm from both hobbyists and commercial sellers showed us that many people had been looking for a tool like this long before we started building it.
Community and creative process
When asked how community input shapes their design choices, Valeria & Mattia had plenty of examples to share.
You let the community vote on what gets built next. What’s it like designing by committee in that way? Does it ever pull you somewhere you wouldn’t have gone on your own?
All the time, and that’s actually one of the best parts. If we only designed things for ourselves, we would probably have a much narrower catalog.
Community voting often pushes us toward animals, themes, and ideas we wouldn’t have chosen on our own. Sometimes those become some of our most successful releases. It’s a great reminder that creativity doesn’t have to be a solo activity.
What’s been the most fun request someone threw at you, even if it never made it into the app?
We’ve received hundreds of requests over the years, ranging from incredibly clever to completely impossible. One of the funniest was a cheese hat. We haven’t made it yet, but we definitely will.
Another request that actually made it into the product was a little “plug” for the dolphin’s blowhole. It sounded funny at first, but it was actually a great idea. We’ve learned never to say never, because today’s joke suggestion can become tomorrow’s bestseller.
Is there a creature or design you’re personally proudest of, separate from whatever was most popular?
One design we’re especially proud of is our Cute Flexi Snake. We’ve always had a soft spot for snakes, especially ball pythons, so this one felt very personal to us.
At first glance, a snake might seem like a simple shape, but making it cute, expressive, flexible, and pleasant to print was a real design challenge. It became one of those models that perfectly represents what we love about Cute Flexi Animals: simple, playful, easy to print, but still full of personality.
ClickerFactory
When asked about the idea behind ClickerFactory, Valeria & Mattia traced it back to a few different threads.
Where did the idea for ClickerFactory come from — a community ask, something you’d been noodling on already, or just a natural next step once you’d built out the flexi side?
A little bit of all three. Once we started building software, we realized the underlying challenge wasn’t really about flexi animals. It was about helping people turn ideas into printable objects without requiring design expertise. ClickerFactory applies the same philosophy to a completely different category of products. The goal is to let someone start with an image and quickly create a functional, printable clicker design.
We also received a clear request from our community for a tool that would allow users to publish their own creations, both for free and for sale. That isn’t possible with Cute Flexi Maker under any license, including the commercial one, which is dedicated to selling physical printed products. With ClickerFactory, that will be possible through the commercial license.
Any chance the two worlds collide, like using a CFM creature head as the business end of a clicker? Has that crossed your minds, or is that just the kind of thing fans dream up?
It has definitely crossed our minds. One thing we’ve learned is that makers are incredibly creative, and they often imagine combinations before we do. We try not to rule anything out. Many features and ideas that seemed unlikely at first eventually found their way into our roadmap.
Does ClickerFactory feel like a side project for fun, or are you thinking of it as a real second pillar alongside CFM?
We see it as a real second pillar. Cute Flexi Maker and ClickerFactory solve different problems, but they share the same vision: making customization and creation more accessible.
We also see clickers as more than just fun objects. They can be fidget items, tactile objects, and tools that are especially interesting for neurodivergent people or anyone who enjoys repetitive, satisfying physical interaction. Our long-term goal isn’t to build a single successful application. We want to build a family of tools that empower makers and help them create objects that are personal, functional, and enjoyable to use.
Looking ahead
When asked what’s next, Valeria & Mattia laid out where things are headed.
A year from now, what does success look like for you two — more animals, a bigger business tier, something else entirely?
For us, success means building a sustainable business that allows us to spend more time creating and less time worrying about logistics. We’d love to continue expanding both Cute Flexi Maker and ClickerFactory, launch new creative tools, and keep growing the community around them.
A very important goal for us is also to extend these two software platforms with programs and licensing dedicated to the educational world. We would love to bring them into schools, workshops, and learning environments because we find that space very interesting and stimulating.
We’d also love to make this our full-time job for both of us. Most importantly, we’d like to maintain the close connection we’ve built with our users while scaling the business.
What’s one thing you want people to understand about Cute Flexi Maker that doesn’t always come across in the marketing posts?
We want people to understand that Cute Flexi Maker isn’t trying to replace designers. Our goal is not to automate creativity or eliminate the need for design skills.
Instead, we want to lower the barrier to entry. There are many people with great ideas who don’t have the time or knowledge to learn CAD software from scratch. If CFM helps those people create something personal, print it, sell it, or simply enjoy the creative process, then we’ve achieved what we set out to do.
Thanks to Valeria and Mattia for taking the time to answer these. If you haven’t tried Cute Flexi Maker yet, it’s worth a look, and keep an eye on ClickerFactory if fidget-friendly, tactile prints are your thing. Designers like Valeria & Mattia are also a good case study in how craft-driven, engineering-heavy work fits into the wider MakerWorld ecosystem. If you’re curious how that translates into actual earnings for creators, check out our breakdown of the MakerWorld Creator Economy.