YOU CAN NOW OWN FILIPINO MYTHICAL CREATURES YOUR MOM USED TO SCARE YOU WITH FROM THIS VISUAL DESIGNER
Classic Filipino myth gets funky, cute designs with this visual designer’s toy art.
Manananggal, impakto, undin—Filipino mythology never fails to pique our interests. There’s tons of stories in our childhood that have scarred us, undoubtedly for life. And even though we were led to be scared of them, we still interest ourselves in reading and reimagining their tales through art such as films, comics, and books.
Martkills, a local visual designer, reintroduces us to Filipino myth through toy art that is portable and cute. Taking a spin from horror to artistic expression, his works reflect a fun, nostalgic play on our childhood horrors for us to outlive with his works that are just adorable.
Toy art is a niche market but it has always been essential in the art industry as a way to recreate and translate concepts into tangible forms just like sculpture, but more fun. Among the many prominent local artists we know include Quiccs, whose designs lean on street and Gundam sensibilities, and Messymaru, whose works are characterized with lego and Japanese inspired robot anime genre, mecha. Toy art also takes on distinct expressions and for one, makes up for modern art that are taking aesthetics and imagination into wild concepts.
Here are just some of Martkills’ fun, creative take on local mythology:
UNDIN
The classic horror icon that emerged in the ‘90s because of the famous horror anthology film Shake, Rattle, & Roll. Although the undin (undine in English) is known as water nymphs across the globe rooting back to the Renaissance Era, our local take on it is quite eerie compared to its most common description of a woman flowing with water. Our localized image paints it as a gooey monster that sprung out of a toilet, spewed out saliva that then melted AiAi Delas Alas in the horror classic, thereby imprinting a classic urban legend across the Philippines that has scared a lot of kids even today. Now, Martkills translates it in petite form to help us imagine the creature even more but in a funky toy.
MANANANGGAL
In his collaboration with another toy and visual artist, HUMBLY, they reimagine the classic manananggal into your manic pixie dreams. Our myth tells the manananggal as a mysterious woman that tears herself in half at midnight to feed on pregnant women and their babies. In their take, we see a pixie-cut creature with blood on her hands, still cute, but true to stories we heard as kids.
TIYANAK
We’ve seen many local horror films tell tales of the tiyanak. They’re the cute babies found spontaneously in forests that turn into ghastly monsters at night. There’s a lot of iterations of this myth but one of its popular versions say that these babies died from childbirth therefore their spirits linger in the forest to find new parents by luring them with their cries. However, Martkills plays with it by reimagining it in diapers and only with one eye. If you know the classic horror film Anak Ni Janice, or any tiyanak-featuring Filipino movie until mid-2010s, then you get an idea of how treacherous and deceptive they can be.
IMPAKTO
The term is encompassing all known local monsters and their variations but generally, it means evil spirits. So, these are the typical aswang we see that are vile, scary, sharp-toothed, and feeds on humans. But, Martkills gives it a pop culture twist with his reference to Astroboy in his resin toys he call Impaktoboy that features bloated eyes, shredded teeth, and blood on its feet. Who would’ve thought?
More pocket-sized monsters you can take home or commission the visual artist to make:
