'Roadrunner - 50'

Mark this one up for the 'tOkKa Archives' i guess..

..in 1999 the The Looney Tunes dynamic desert duo : Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote celebrated their 50th anniversary (only a dork like me would keep up with that) !! An assignmnt for one of my visual communications classes was to create a 'Biography' magazine cover.. the illustration could be anyone of note: Marilyn Manson,Drew Carry, or the Pope.. for some reason i chose my favourite Looney Tunes twosome to celebrate their birthday!! The assignment was to help limit the colour palette i was using and to build the colours to what i wanted using just the primary colours. I don't think i pulled the colours off very well. But i remember getting up one particularly cold morning to work on this,i was so excited cuz i loved R.R. and Wile E. so much and thought it'd be alot of fun to get a jump on their birthday (yeh..i'm a freek ,that's already been established )!! This may not be the best thing i've made.. but it's one of he few things i am proud of. It's shows a rare control in my wrist i seem to be lacking anymore.

Melissa describes Wile E. Coyote::First appearing with Road Runner in "Fast and Furry-ous" (in 1949) by Chuck Jones, Wile E. Coyote had to wait until 1952 before the famous duo again hit the screen in their second animated short film, "Beep Beep." Since that time, Wile E. Coyote has co-starred in more than 40 Road Runner films and, in a series of cartoons with Bugs Bunny, Wile E. pursues the inimitable rabbit and even speaks.
Wile E. Coyote is the great American anti-hero, the guy with a dream, overwhelming confidence and obsessive ambition who nevertheless always manages to lose. A brilliant inventor as well as the biggest customer for ACME products, Wile E. Coyote's unshakable conviction in his superior intellect leaves him wide open to the free-wheeling instinctive reactions of the Road Runner.
paletteRoad Runner is so happy-go-lucky and deceivingly an idiot.. you can't help but love him. Anymore ..he's also making bank..he's the logo of a classic car,a hi-speed internet service, a 'snow-melt' & de-icer for your drive way in the winter time..and i do remember a chain of gas stations & truck stops bearing his name and likeness and a video game star!!

Wile E. Coyote is my iconic cartoon hero..when he did talk ( so elequantly mind you..),he was voiced by the immortal Mel Blanc who voiced 100s of others (Tweety Pie,Bugs Bunny,Mr.Spacely..you know the guy !!) Always the fall guy with an ego the size of a mountain..whe also served as a kinda a humorous example of an old Nat King Cole song : Pick yourself up...
"..Take a deep breath...
Dust yourself off
And start all over again. .." (My mawm used to sing it all the time..).

You always felt pretty bad for the Coyote..even if he was the villian.. poor guy never got a break.. and when his ACME TM inventions backfired.. he darn near be dead..and his trademark 'signs' showed the expressions of the doomed.

..but Wile E.'s tough.. and like the late,great creator;Chuck Jones used to say (as i really paraphrase here)..::

'There's only one Road Runner ..but we can always get another Coyote..'
~~** Beep Beep !!

colour pencils,magic marker,- Winter 1998