Pigs Take Over The Internet With Freely Abrigo’s #ProjectBaboy 

Social media boomed with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos these past few months. Everyone from international celebrities like “Star-Lord”, Chris Pratt to pretty much everyone in your friend’s list are doing it all for a good cause and well, for the sake of riding the hype train. This challenge has undoubtebly gone viral and admittedly did a pretty good job at promoting the cause.

Even Cap got himself into it.

Prior to its success, many other challenges started to sprout out of nowhere, (#KFCBucketChallenge, anyone?) with one of them being cartoonist Freely Abrigo’s #ProjectBaboy (or #BaboyChallenge), which is pretty much like the Ice Bucket Challenge but with less ice bucket, more art—and of course, pigs.

The rules are simple. You draw a pig in your art style, post it on Facebook (with either the hashtags #ProjectBaboy or #BaboyChallenge), challenge four more artists and within 24 hours, wait for the people who have been nominated to take up the challenge. Easy. But why a pig you say? Well as Freely puts it, “napakadaling tandaan at sobrang CUTE”–you really can’t argue with that logic. The challenge has no specific cause to promote and is all done in the spirit of fun (and probably a local secret pig-based  fandom). A good share of local and even some international artists have already participated in the #BaboyChallenge and honestly, it’s pretty great to see them draw piggies in their own unique styles.

Flipgeeks sat down with Mr. Abrigo and shot him some questions about this viral piggy art challenge.

FLIPGEEKS: Why did you choose a pig for the animal to be drawn for this challenge? There are other animals just as cute and memorable.
FREELY ABRIGO: Why pigs? Pigs are fun to work with, you can make different characters with that animal. They’re also sexy even though they’re fat, that’s why I thought of pigs. Plus, they’re really easy to draw, even kids can draw them.

How did you feel when you saw that #ProjectBaboy is spreading and becoming a trending tag throughout Facebook?
I’m still shocked until now! At this very moment, the challenge just got to Korea!

Wow! That’s amazing! It’s become an international challenge!
Yeah! First it was Singapore and Indonesia then Japan and the US and now, even Korea! Wow!

Besides being viral on Facebook, is #ProjectBaboy being featured in other websites?
Yeah, it is. It was featured on a newspaper broadsheet last Sunday (the feature was quite short there) but they said next Sunday they might include the other artworks. Another website also confirmed they’re gonna feature Baboy Challenge.

Oh. What if they want to exhibit artworks from Project Baboy? Would you be all right with it?
Yes! ‘Cause I’m proud that the challenge came here from the Philippines. It’s also a way for other countries to see how skilled Filipino artists are. But of course before they do that, I strictly state that they need the artists’ permission before they use the artworks as a sign of respect.

Last question, if you were to challenge four artists from anywhere around the world, dead or alive, for Project Baboy, who would those four be?

Ours would be Walt Disney!
Hahaha! That’ll be intense!

Four? Hmm…

Well first, Leonardo da Vinci for painting.

Second is Marvel’s Stan Lee.

Third would be…all right, I’m going with Walt Disney!

Fourth would be of course, Pinoy, Larry Alcala.

Thank you for answering our questions! More power to you and #ProjectBaboy and we hope it keeps on trending!
Thanks to you guys too!

There you have it, Freely Abrigo himself on Project Baboy. This challenge has received amazing attention, support and participation from all over the globe. From cute piglets to ‘baboy-ramo’ warlords to choice cuts, the possibilities are endless as each artist gives their own flavor to this hamon (pun very much intended) . It just goes on to show how diversified, creative and unique our local artists are–and has pretty much given the #BaboyChallenge the purpose of showing the social media (and the real) world of just that.

Here is a collection of some artworks from #ProjectBaboy

Have you done #ProjectBaboy yet? No? Then Flipgeeks challenges you!