Fresh from his viral post that gave Disney characters a Filipino twist, Cedrhick Fajardo strikes again and gave iconic Lea Salonga characters a Filipinized look.
The 17-year old Senior High School student gave Filipiniana garments to Erzulie of “Once on This Island”, Kim of “Miss Saigon”, and Eponine of “Les Misérables” as challenged by PalabasTayo for an “AfterParty” Livestream guesting on its Facebook page and YouTube channel.
Compared to his earlier Disney post of 11 images which he created in a span of 5 days, it took him about three days to complete three of Salonga’s most memorable roles. Fajardo says “this is not as easy as it looks because I am not working on two-dimensional images as reference. I also wanted to finish it in time for the show’s art episode where I would be guesting with two other artists.
Filipinized Kim (Art by Cedrhick Fajardo)
Fajardo shared that he is a member of a Filipino Folk dance troupe where he was exposed to the beauty and elegance Filipiniana costumes. He used this influence in his digital art coupled with research to reimagine the three characters. For Erzulie, he patterned her after one of the deities of Philippine mythology, Diyan Masalanta who is also the goddess of love, conception, and childbirth. For Kim, he imagined the lovestruck lass as a Filipina maiden in the rice fields wearing baro’t saya and alampay. “I had a lot of fun working on these illustrations because these roles portrayed by Lea Salong are very iconic”, admitted Fajardo.
In the AfterParty episode where he first unveiled the new images, fellow guests were quite impressed with his work.
Arthur Tselischev, Ukrainian visual artist and photographer who had worked in an animation company in the Philippines was quite impressed with the close resemblance and recognizable images using black & white tones. Content creator and recording artist Marijah Debelic also agreed that Cedrhick is very talented and has a bright future ahead of him given this kind of passion in his art.
As an incoming freshman of Fine Arts major in Visual Communications in college, he plans to get the best job experience and explore opportunities abroad when he finishes his education. He dreams of becoming part of Disney Animation in the future.
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