Who is Beeper?

As I mentioned in the last few posts, I was given the letter 'L' to design as part of a giant sign that will read "FestivALL," which is an arts festival in my hometown of Charleston, WV. I chose to design my letter to look like Beeper. But who is Beeper? If you've lived in WV for any amount of time over the last half century you probably already know.



Beeper was the sidekick mascot on Mr. Cartoon, a kids television program local to the WV area. He didn't speak and would communicate (?) by honking a horn that he carried around. The show starred Mr. Cartoon, portrayed by George Lewis until 1969, and then by Jule Huffman until the show went off the air in 1995. Huffman is arguably the guy that most fans identify with the show.

The format of the show involved showing mostly Looney Tunes Cartoons between segments of Mr. Cartoon interacting and playing games with an audience of kids. I was lucky enough to be on the show when I was a kid, as were most of my friends. I remember Beeper laying across a group of us, and being disappointed that you didn't actually get to watch the cartoons when you sat in the audience, haha.



A bit of trivia I've heard is that in the early days of the show they acquired the costumes used on the 1968 Hannah Barbara show The Banana Splits, and Beeper is actually made from a modified costume of the character Drooper from that show. The information I've found online seems to support this, as apparently the Banana Splits themselves made appearances on Mr. Cartoon until 1974 when Beeper was introduced. How those costumes wound up in WV I have no idea.

An early intro for the show featured Mr. Cartoon driving one of those old cars that could actually go in water like a motorboat. You got to see him drive it right into a river, and apparently the car belonged to my great uncle. My dad remembers watching the intro when he was a kid.

Something I find funny is that WSAZ, the local NBC affiliate that aired the show, has started using Beeper as a little icon to accompany the news ticker that shows school closings in the winter. This cracks me up because any school-age kids will likely have no idea who Beeper is. Not that I want them to stop using it, I think it's an awesome throwback.

My friend Mike, part of the Brainwrap film crew, has often said that he would like to film a movie where Mr. Cartoon goes to the planet Beepo and enslaves a member of the Beeper race as his sidekick, haha.




This is an Old Mr. Cartoon membership card. I remember having one of these. Check out that downright ghastly drawing of Beeper!

I could go on about how fondly people of this area remember the show, or how cool it is to have a pop culture icon of sorts specific to your home town, but you can just check out the Facebook fanpage, which has an amazing 18,000 members.

L is for Beeper!

I'm really happy with the finished product, It has kind of an old carnival decoration feel to it.
And if you don't know who Beeper is, I will explain tomorrow!

L is for Progress Part 2

Some more progress photos. If you are from West Virginia and own a TV then you will probably be able to figure out what it is at this point. For everyone else answers will be coming soon!

L is for Progress

FestivALL is an annual event in my hometown of Charleston, WV that involves art exhibitions, concerts, and performances to showcase the creative side of the city. Last year they asked various Charleston artists to each design a letter of the phrase "A city becomes a work of art." The final result was used as a logo and symbol of sorts for the event. I was asked to design one the letters for this year's project which will simply spell "FestivALL." I was honored to be asked, especially since less letters means fewer artists were chosen. The kicker is that this year the letters are four-foot-tall physical representations cut from plywood that will be put on wheels and rolled around the city.

I received the letter 'L' to design. Here are some progress photos that don't give away too much of what the final product will be. I'm actually just about done with it so I'll post more photos soon.

90s Show Poster

I was asked to design the poster for the Autumn Society's 90s show, so here it is! I'm working on about five different projects right now so I took a bit of an easy route and just reused my Carl Winslow drawing, but I had fun coming up with all the 90s design elements.

Fanservice

This is the second piece I hinted at for the 90's show. The idea for this as my next pin-up was already in my head, and then I realized that it actually fit the show's theme which gave me an excuse to do it. Basically these are all fanservice characters from the 90's: Cammy from Streetfighter, Fairchild from Gen13, and Poison Ivy from Batman: The Animated Series. The reason I chose these three is because they also all wear the same thing, a green jumpsuit that shows off their hindquarters. I was going to draw attention to that by making the drawing monochrome except for the green, but I liked the colors too much. So I decided to make it into an ad, lest viewers get distracted and not pick up on the theme...

Oh and if you don't know what fanservice means, you probably have a good guess by now.

Also a quick update, the 1up.com article that featured my artwork has now been updated with a credit line and a link to my site. I received an email from them this morning. That's usually what happens when I open my mouth to complain, it turns out the people are really nice and helpful and were probably just busy, hah.

Happy Birthday Pac-Man!

My Pac-Man collection, not as impressive as most.

Did you know? Pac-Man was originally called Puck-Man because of his shape, but the side of his arcade cabinets could have been easily vandalized to say something else, so the name was changed. (Figure it out.)

The world has come a long way in the 30 years since Pac-Man was introduced. For one thing, we're much more politically correct. The name "Mrs. Pac-Man" seems a bit sexist now, and we've taken steps to remedy such occurrences by doing things like change the term "mailman" to "postal carrier." So to even things up a bit, here is Mr. Pac-Woman:



I don't know.