COJO GETS HIS ASS KICKED BY WWE SUPERSTAR CM PUNK
10-11-07 POST KEYWORDS: COJO, COMIC STRIP, CM PUNK, WWE, Cojo
So I finally have a free minute, so I'm gonna give you the straight dope on the WWE CM PUNK project. First you can watch a little video WWE put together to learn a little more about this crazy fun job from CM PUNK's perspective.
As you can see from that video, it was a fun few hours of posing for PUNK in Phoenix, Arizona while the real work went down back on the East Coast. I've never done illustrations where someone else photographed a model and then he was dropped into my finished drawings (As photographs) so I knew it would take some preplanning. I was not only creating all of the backgrounds and background characters, I'd also be doing all the special effect typography, word balloons, dialog typography, and CM PUNK Logo. Not to mention a fully illustrated three page gatefold foldout poster.
I had to communicate via e-mail with Maki about what I was thinking for the panels before she would fly out to Arizona for the CM PUNK photo shoot. I had to make sure she'd have him pose in all the positions I needed to finish the strip.
BRANT LOUCK, WWE Magazine's creative director asked me to meet up with him and world renowned photographer MAKI KAWAKITA for breakfast at BALTHAZAR. Meeting with an art director before a job doesn't happen often in my line of work, generally the pregame rundown can happen over the phone or via e-mail, but since this job was more intensive and I'd be helping art direct the photo shoot it was sort of critical that I be there. I was already dead tired being in mid-deadline for the POPULAR SCIENCE JOB.
Brant had sketched out rough ideas for all of the panels. You can see them briefly in the WWE video. The copy for the word balloon dialog wasn't yet written but the plot was basically there. See Brant's sketch for page one below:
The idea for the first panel was that PUNK would be drinking soda in a ritzy society ball, with posh bitches walking around, drinking booze. CM PUNK would be feeling a bit out of place (CM PUNK is straight edge btw.)
Somehow PUNK realizes that the bartender is a bad guy, rolls his hands and then grabs the bartender by the mouth for questioning. In the sketch the "bad guy" bartender looked a bit like me, so I suggested I model for that part. Brant thought that would be funny. It also saved me time having to get a model that looked like he was big enough to try to fuck with CM PUNK and stand a chance. Here is how that first page turned out:
As you can see, some of the panels I did, aren't exactly the same layout as the original sketch the WWE staff came up with. In the first panel I added a few females into the foreground.
This was to establish depth, but it was also fun because I got to draw my beautiful actress girlfriend MOLLY (girl on left) and my friend ANNIE (on right). I've modeled for Annie before so it was only fair that I made her model for me.
Over breakfast I was trying to figure out what exactly Brant was thinking for a High Society Ball. I noticed that the floor-to-ceiling bar in Balthazar was pretty much what the panel would look like so I asked Maki if she could pose for me quickly in front of the wall of booze so I could use it as reference for the panel (see below).
You can see the second panel, in a circle on the right was going to be some sort of CM PUNK head looking like a "Spider Sense is Tingling" sort of thing as he realizes that the bartender is bad. How he would realize this was a plot point that we didn't have an answer to. Since we were going to break panel three up into three separate panels with sequentially enlarging close-ups of PUNK's upper body / head it would have been just too many close-ups.
We figured since PUNK's hand tattoos were easily recognizable, closing-up on the character's hands would read better, so if the bad character had a "menacing" tattoo that identified him as evil it would help it to make sense. I had to create a menacing looking tattoo, and it had to read at a distance. We went with a scorpion. I drew up a tattoo and we were back in business.
For the last panel I flipped the characters so that PUNK would be on the left reaching right, as in the top panel PUNK was established as being to the bartender's left. It also drew the reader's eye to the left, so the action would read from left to right (like a book).
In the second sketched page, the ideas got even more loose. It would be a three panel page. The first panel was easy, a big CM PUNK punch while the bartender / villain flies back, reeling from the impact. The second panel would be easy for me, as it was just going to be a close-up of PUNK being astonished by something. Panel 3 was vague, but the idea was something like PUNK is now on the street with an army of punks behind him. Here is how the finished page turned out:
As you can see I worked on the first panel almost straight from the sketch, but I was concerned about the next two panels.
The problem with the second panel was that it was just another close-up, and didn't give any indication as to how the hell PUNK gets outside the Society Ball into the street.
I suggested that PUNK give him an over the top MATRIX STYLE kick through a window and out of the ball. I was thinking specifically of the scene where Morpheus kicks Neo in the Dojo launching him forward and he flies into a wooden pillar in the extreme foreground cracking it in two.
Brant dug the idea so I went forward with it. Maki shot the PUNK kick and I shot myself in the Neo-esque pose and worked it out with a lot of broken glass and a big sound effect. The problem with moving the action from indoors to outdoors in one panel was solved.
The weirdness I had with the last panel was that CM PUNK doesn't really have an Army of Punks on the WWE shows. The fact that the punks wouldn't be appearing in the panels on the next page and that they seemed sort of out of place and unnecessary made them a confusing element in the panel. I suggested putting my character knocked out in the extreme foreground while PUNK looks on ominously with a reddish half light behind him (in the same pose suggested in the sketch) while people run around confused in the background.
I added a little inside joke to the XM Satellite Radio Community sticking a small but visible RON AND FEZ SHOW MIGHTY HORSE VS. MONKEY HOUSE reference on the side of a NYC Cab, because they rock the fat ass. (See Below)
Page three was a little confusing too. The sketched idea was a three panel strip. (see below)
In the first panel, PUNK's tux would now be completely ripped off and he would be crouching in the street in front of a fire hydrant. The second panel would be a close-up of PUNK's eyes as he contemplates something big coming. The last panel would be PUNK telling people to back up as hell on earth and explosions blow behind him. Here is how the finished art came out.
I basically went by the sketches, adding buildings and details. The last panel was a bitch because of all the fire effects, and all the detail in the buildings. I got to throw in a bunch of fun inside jokes into this last panel as well.
I got two of my friends to model last minute for the extras in this panel. In the foreground is one of my former classmates and fellow SVA alumni RICHARD ZIMMER (foreground) and JOSH CLARK (background).
I also got to throw in an OPIE AND ANTHONY WOW STICKER on the back of the minivan as a shout to the Opie and Anthony show and all the PESTS on WACKBAG and THE OPIE AND ANTHONY EXPERIENCE.
After the strip was almost done they asked me if I could knock out the gatefold poster in a weekend so it could get in with the printing of the magazine. This job printed amazingly, but I really didn't get more than a few hours of sleep for about two weeks there. Good luck CM PUNK, I hope your career skyrockets. Maybe you kicking my ass in cartoon form in some small way helped you out.
Oh, funny addition to the story, when I deposited the check for this job, the hot chick bank teller looked down at the check, then back up at me and with stars in her eyes she asked "Wow, you work for the World Wrestling Entertainment?!"
-Cojo "Art Juggernaut"
