Alexandra Trese

I've always wanted to do cosplay shoots of local characters, and Trese immediately came under consideration after picking up Book 1. It's our small way of supporting the resurgence in local comic book titles.

The pop-culture scenes in Japan or the U.S. has grown huge mainly of their own market's patronage of their characters. Because of their eventual global influence, other markets end up having to consume them (e.g. Philippines). When we start loving our own home-grown pop-culture enough to tip over the scales, is perhaps the start of the real growth in our local scene.

On Lighting the Image

Just because a scene is "dark" it doesn't necessarily have to be really dark when it is shot. Trese took about 14 lights to accomplish, all of which used small modifiers and honey comb grids. Our eyes and in turn, subconscious imagination process light at a naturally fast pace. So fast, that we don't seem to care, and take it for granted. We needed to step back and look at this process from a 3rd person, and translate how our eyes and mind consume all this information and turn it into actual lighting techniques.

To know more about Trese, please check out Budjette Tan's DA page,

Make-up: Kris Bacani / Bianca King
Styling: Hannah Kim
Costume Production: Badj Genato
Production Design: Raffy Tesoro
Art Director: Angelo Lico
Digital Imaging: Angelo Lico
Models: Bianca King, Tiffany Alejandro, Philip Arca, Sassan Shohouki
Special Thanks to: Budjette Tan, Wella Balagtas and Kajo Baldesimo