Wile E. Coyote was a large part of my childhood. His cartoons were my favorite of all the Looney Tunes. I love his determination at catching the Road-Runner. I love his inexhaustible budget for all things ACME. I love the complexity of his Rube Goldberg-like plans. I love the absurdity of his failures.
One of my favorite episodes is “Beep, Beep” from 1958. In this one, Coyote employs blueprints to aid in his preparations against Road-Runner. I think of the blueprints as quintessential coyote-ness, however after a careful rewatch of all the shorts I have access to, he only uses blueprints in this episode and “Operation Rabbit.”
At any rate, the blueprints from this episode make me smile, and I thought printing the blueprints out would be a nice thing for a shop wall or for other family member who also have a fondness for the determined coyote.
I screen-grabbed some shots off of a Laser Disc compilation of Road Runner shorts and redrew them using Affinity Designer. I tried to be true to the source material so that the images would be clearly recognizable. I took some liberties by straightening some lines, using a font instead of hand written letters, etc., and I am pleased with the results.
In this first scene, Wile E. Coyote plans to drop an anvil onto an unsuspecting Road-Runner from a tight-wire strung across a gorge.
In this second scene, a box is rigged to explode when the water glass is lifted. One of the things I love about the box is that even though it is introduced near the beginning of the episode, the payoff comes at the end after the viewer has probably assumed the gag was over and not going to be revisited.
While, I don’t want him to hurt the Road-Runner, I do feel a sense of pity for him and all the pain he has to endure for the audience’s enjoyment.