A tale about triumph over adversity

The next big thing in the Philippine animation industry is about to happen this December as Dayo competes with seven other films in the 2008 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) which opens on Christmas day.

It wasn’t easy for Cutting Edge Productions, the local animators behind Dayo, to enter the festival. When they submitted the script by Temi Abad and Eric Cabahug for consideration, the committee didn’t immediately accept it. But the team didn’t give up and insisted on presenting the project until they convinced the committee that they could do it. The primary consideration was time constraint and meeting the deadline especially for first time producers. Dayo made it to the Final 8.

Dayo is a heartwarming story of overcoming one’s fear and triumphing over adversity. It centers on the 11-year-old Bubuy (voiced by Nash Aguas) who is out to save his abducted grandparents in the land of Elementalia, a magical and mystical world that houses many of the Philippines’ mythical creatures and enchanted elements. Along the way, Bubuy meets Anna Manananggirl (Katrina Legaspi), a teen manananggal (a winged creature that can separate her torso from her lower body) who befriends and helps Bubuy in his quest to rescue his grandparents.

The creative team of Dayo consulted published literature on local mythology. The main reference is the book Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology by Maximo Ramos.

Dayo aims to reintroduce the other side of mythical creatures like the tikbalang, kapre, manananggal and aswang by giving a new dimension to these usual reviled creatures. “They are normally presented as predators or portrayed as villains,” says director Robert Quilao. “We created a new twist to these characters by transforming the scary manananggal into the friendly manananggol (defender) who acts as the guardian of Elementalia.”

The team already had talents in mind when they were working on the characters except for the lead roles of Bubuy and Anna which they held auditions for. For example, they already had Pokwang in mind for the manananggal yaya of Anna, hence the character sketch is loosely based on her. The team also thought of how it would be like to have Pokwang exchange lines with news anchor Mike Enriquez. So there’s a character whose voice only sounds like Enriquez since the team is not able to get the real one to voice for the role. The team disclaims though that if other animated characters may appear to have similarities with real life people, those are unintentional.

The film also features voices of Michael V, Noel Trinidad, Nova Villa, Johnny Delgado, Peque Gallaga and Laurice Guillen.

Dayo is a hybrid product of combining 2D and 3D animation, powered by Toon Boom using Macintosh and Linux platforms. 2D animation is used for the characters while 3D animation is used for the backgrounds especially for the big scenes.