Introduction
This is the first in a series of posts about my project to create an A-Z of Movie Deaths, inspired by Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies.
The character
Apollo Creed is the antagonist of the Rocky films. A flashy, hot-tempered, egotistical counter-point to Rocky Balboa — the mild-mannered, unassuming Italian boxer, working two jobs for a living when a shot at Creed, the champ, falls into his lap.
In the first film, Creed’s arrogance is apparent. He gives Rocky, an underdog with no real previous experience boxing at a high level, an opportunity for the fight of his life. He thinks it’s going to be a walk in the park, picking a man off the street, but Rocky shows how Creed underestimates him.
They fight — and even though Apollo wins, Rocky makes enough of a fight for his story to catch light with the media. At the threat of being upstaged by Rocky’s underdog narrative, Rocky II is all about Creed provoking Rocky to get back in the ring and finish what they started.
In a nail-biting encounter, the pair trade blows and Rocky wins a well-fought fight by the narrowest of margins.
By the time Rocky III rolls around, there’s a change of dynamic in the pair’s relationship, as a new fighter, Clubber Lang, rolls into town. A Mike Tyson-style, take no prisoners, kind of a boxer — played by Mr T from tv’s The A-Team.
Apollo, now a bit older and wiser, helps Rocky train to fight Lang. He beats him — and this film sees a real friendship developing between Rocky and Creed based on their mutual admiration and respect. The film even ends on a freeze-frame of the two fighting in a good-natured, closed-door re-match as friends. Creed is humble and supportive in this movie — which made the events of the next one so much harder to take.
The death scene
Rocky IV is all about USA vs the USSR as symbolised by Creed accepting an exhibition match with Ivan Drago, the unfeeling Russian, who seems more of a robot than a man.
He comes out of retirement at 43, to put Drago in his place but the Russian has the last word, knocking Apollo out with a killer blow, dramatically, as Rocky throws in the towel from Creed’s corner of the ring.
It’s not the first death in the Rocky saga — but it’s incredibly impactful to watch, like I did, as a young kid. The narrative arc of these once mortal enemies, finding common ground and becoming first friends, is really satisfying. Cos isn’t that what we all want? To put aside differences, no matter how deep-rooted and work together? To then have that brutally ripped away is quite shocking.
Apollo’s death works on a number of levels. It highlights Creed’s vanity and hubris in deciding to fight. It gives Rocky a focus to avenge his friend’s death (and rid himself of some of the guilt he feels by abiding by Creed’s wishes to go through with the fight in the first place).
And it sets up a feel-good finale where the USA gets its revenge on Russia — take that you Ruskies! The Soviet crowd warm to Rocky as a symbolic thawing of USA-USSR relations and Rocky waves Apollo’s shorts around as a mark of respect to the thwarted warrior.
The artwork
Full disclosure here —this was my first attempt at ‘creating a style’.
It’s also the first appearance of my little orange guy, Seth Stanley.
I talked in another post about the influence of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies on this project, and while there were things I wanted to take from that (like the death scene/childlike simplicity/the rhyming couplets) . There were also things I wanted to move away from.
I was learning Photoshop on the fly — I didn’t have a traditional background in creating art, or drawing/painting techniques.
Where Gorey used a Victorian, hand-drawn style to great effect — in contrast, I wanted something much brighter. Something that looked like it could have been made by a child. I thought about how kids cut and paste to make collages using different materials and thought I would explore that.
I got some felt textures and created shapes with added noise effects to create something texturally different. Much more interesting than flat shapes. I went in heavy with a lot of drop shadow to try and obviously show the use of layers. So even though it was entirely created digitally, it might help to look like it wasn’t.
Composition
The head and body of the orange figure are the same sized shape. The body is just an inverted head. The figure is intended to look off-balance, like he’s about to fall. The ring ropes are snakey, to indicate motion — like they’ve recently been leaned-into.
I drew the shorts and boots from memory — they’re not intended to be movie-accurate, but I remembered them being kind of larger-than-life, befitting Apollo’s character. The pupil of the eye is supposed to be fixed on an out-of-shot Ivan Drago.
There’s blood emerging from the eye and just under the moustache to indicate he’s taking quite a beating. In hindsight, I might have exaggerated this even more for humorous effect. I don’t think it’s quite obvious enough.
But that’s the beauty of working digitally, I can go back, edit and re-shape the image as often as I’d like. Everything’s a work in progress.
The bit at the end
It was fun to deconstruct this — and I hope it’s an interesting insight into the creative processes I went through to make it.
If you’re an artist/illustrator/cartoonist - I’m interested to hear how you would have approached this piece differently. Would you have chosen a different character for ‘A’? Would you have presented the scene differently? I’d love to have more conversation about this!
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