Badass Roadrunners, 1,2 and 3

February 29, 2012

Woke up this morning and it was a tad nippy for Arizona (low fifties) so started a fire in my Big Bug Creek studio stove and hunkered down to noodle some sketches for Paul Hutton's centennial piece wherein he makes a case for the roadrunner being a perfect mascot and metaphor for New Mexico. Actually, he contrasts and compares, what he calls, "The Badass Roadrunner" and Chuck Jone's famous roadrunner (Beep! Beep!). Here's a quick sketch and layout I did last night before I went home:

This was utilizing a famous photo of a new Mexico church with three young girls standing in front and in the sky would be a Roadrunner grasping a rattlesnake. From here I married an old post card of one of the pueblos with our big, bad friend:

This was inspired by Godzilla and idea that a big, mean roadrunner would loom over a pueblo village. Woke up this morning and got inspired by Mexico's flag showing an eagle gripping a rattler in its talons and I thought well, what if the roadrunner had on a biker jacket? That could be fun.

Unfortunately, that long tail comes off more as a spray than a tuft of long feathers, but that can be fixed.

"Without heroes, we are all plain people, and don't know how far we can go."
—Bernard Malamud