Date: 8/20/03
Author: Erika Holmes

Michael Fudzinski (pic: Michael Aldridge)

Michael Fudzinski is a name that you will become more familiar with in the future as he awes wakeboard enthusiasts everywhere with his unique and promising new wakeboard graphics.

Michael, a 28-year old Lake Placid resident, works as an event coordinator at the Olympic Regional Development Authority. With a great love of sports, Michael has dedicated 17 years to the sport of snowboarding and was, at one time, sponsored by Airwalk Snowboards and Spy Optics. Michael also just finished his first marathon in October and is currently training for an Iron Man Triathlon. Michael is a very active guy with a passion for sports of all kinds ranging from golf, hiking, snowboarding and, of course, wakeboarding.

Michael Fudzinski (pic: Michael Aldridge)

Entering the realm of sports as a board sports manager at Mountain and Boarder Town, a local sport shop in Lake Placid, Michael developed a desire to design wakeboard graphics. Powered by this desire, Michael organized a few samples into a portfolio, and flew down to Surf Expo 2000 in Florida to meet with CWB art director Ken Horne.

Michael remembers the anxiety he felt when waiting for a response from Ken as he looked through Michael's portfolio. He was worried that his designs weren't up to the potential to represent CWB products. Eight months later, he found out that they were. "At that point I set my goal on designing the graphics for a pro model. That's when I started working with Rob [Struharik]," Michael explains.

CWB Prodigy 132

CWB was exuberant with the feedback that was received from the graphics Michael designed on Rob's two boards for 2002. They were new, different and original, just what CWB needed to enhance the company image on the new Prodigy shape. Artistically unique because of the extensive detail, these new graphics also provided an identifiable CWB logo ripping through the bottom of the board. The essence of this logo evolved drastically as Michael worked with Rob to create an image of CWB as a powerful, signature board, one that could be identified in wakeboard videos, competitions and store windows.

For 2003, Michael's assignment grew even more extensive. Not only did he design the Prodigy boards, he also designed the new CWB Hood, Inferno, and Sol. While working at his full time day job, Michael still managed to make time to design and perfect the 2003 designs.

Michael explains that it takes several months to go through the procedure of creating a design and implementing it onto the board. Michael estimated that for several weeks when the Prodigy series boards were being designed for 2003 that Rob and he exchanged five to seven phone calls a day beginning at 9:00 am and sometimes going as late as 11.30 pm! He even met at Rob's private lake in Ohio to work on graphics and Michael laughs at the memory of the two finding time to make "a pretty cool slider also."

CWB Prodigy 140

Over the past two years that Michael has been designing CWB boards graphics, he and Rob have developed a strong friendship, which has made the Prodigy series his favorite boards to design. "Rob is a really intelligent guy with so many ideas, so sometimes it's tough to decide on just one thing," says Michael.

However hard to decide, the two managed to put their heads together and introduce something new to wakeboard graphics for 2003. Rob was all for making "tanks" the underlying theme of his boards. Therefore, attempting a medium that Michael had not seen before on any other wakeboards, he developed the concept of photographing sculptures. "The fact that we came up with a concept no one has ever used, really gets me fired up," says Michael.

Trying new artistic procedures on his boards is what Michael prides himself on. He wants his designs to be different, eye catching, and mesmerizing. An example of this creativity can be seen on the 2003 Prodigy 132 board. Using the sharp colors of black and white, Michael created extremely detailed features in charcoal in the smoke images on the board that you must examine closely to see. By using this technique, Michael pushes out the CWB image in a dramatic blue and then pulls you in with the extensive detail that must be observed closely.

Another Prodigy series trademark that has drawn interest is that the boards have a textured background unique to the series. To create this feature, Michael took a large piece of polished aluminum and spent hours on his hands and knees with sandpaper to scratch it up. From there he photographed the image and downloaded it into Photoshop and created the designs that will be placed on top of the aluminum backdrop.

These uniquely creative ideas have made the Prodigy boards, as well as other CWB boards, look as fantastic as they ride. An avid wakeboarder for the last four years, Michael is excited to lend his artistic hand to the sport he loves. Averaging about four hours of riding per week, Michael makes his time on the water all about fun on his favorite Fudzinski-designed CWB board; the Prodigy Platinum.

Michael Fudzinski designs

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