Mascot of the “Guardians of the Galaxy”, the adorable and vegetal Baby Groot was developed by Filipino artist Anthony Francisco. And to create it, the latter was inspired by a tree like no other…
At the heart of Guardians of the Galaxy volume 2, the adorable Baby Groot (a kind of vegetable reincarnation of the first Groot who had given his life to save his friends) literally melted all Marvel fans.
While the little tree recently got its own series of shorts on Disney+, Filipino artist Anthony Francisco, who was commissioned to come up with the character’s design, revealed his inspiration.
“When I first saw Baby Groot on screen, I felt like I was filming my son, so in a way, Baby Groot is a little Filipino boy”thus confided Francisco, invited to the microphone of the Mexican Podcast.
It is therefore by observing the expressions of his own child that the artist gave life to the juvenile mimics of Baby Groot. But as for the texture of the character, its trunk and its bark, Francisco borrowed them from a very specific tree from his country of origin, which he wanted to put in the spotlight:
“When my son was four years old, I wondered what I could add from my Filipino culture [dans ce personnage]. Even if it is already a tree. But I wanted to use a very specific type of tree, called the Balete tree in the Philippines.
There are stories about her…that the White Lady lives in the Balete tree. I just used some of his textures, the way his roots hang down, and the branches and inner parts of Baby Groot.”
Believed to be home to ghosts according to local folklore, Balete trees are often planted by roadsides, and their cuttings can also become bonsai trees, like Baby Groot which – after being almost completely destroyed at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy – started to grow again in a small earthen pot.
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