Character Design Paradigms: Designing Sang’re Pirena

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I have always had more than one sketch pad in my backpack ever since my college days. One was used for my academic subjects and one was for doodling. And of course, I loved the doodle pads more. Especially one I had in 1993. I was already good in human anatomy by that time.

Obviously, aside from drawing nude women, my favorite doodles were of science fiction characters, superheroes and mythical creatures(Most of which were also women, hahaha.). My collection was very thick that It became some sort of a catalog of conceptual character designs. Most were crude and sketchy but enough to carry a character. One character that I held on to was A fire pixie with sculpted hair that points upward from the nape(Figure 01). I imagined her to be a hot headed character. She became one of my favorite fairy creatures.

In 2004, I was hired to design a set of characters for the local TV series, Encantadia and “Pirena” was one that caught my attention.

In the Encantadia lore, Pirena is the keeper of the elemental fire gem. She is a princess. A bratt. A Hot head. And she had issues. I was faced with a very familiar character after 11 years. “Hey, Fire pixie!”, I thought.

Figure 02

Instead of drawing “Pirena” with a sculpted hair, I gave her a sculpted royal battle helm. I took the idea from Egyptian Head dresses as seen above(Figure 02). Her armor, along with her helm, had to look like it was created by a volcano, so I put stylized textures that would remind us of molten lava.(Figure 03)

Figure 03

The design was immediately approved and was manufactured by Mountain Rock productions, supervised by Benedict and Elizabeth Batoctoy.

The character was played by drama actress, Sunshine Dizon and I finally saw my fire pixie moving and destroying people.(Figure 04 and Figure 05)

Figure 04

Figure 05

In 2005, the character was re designed for the second season, ETHERIA. I made her look like a general by removing the distressed under clothing. (Figure 06)

Figure 06

We eventually decided that the arm bands and shin guards should be more refined or fine forged when the costume was actualized. (Figure 07 and Figure 08)