Renegade Animation has revived Wile E. Coyote and several other classic Warner Bros. characters for a clever new promo for Cartoon Network featuring the hapless coyote facing a line-up of well-known animated birds, including his nemesis, Road Runner. Mixing live-action with animation, "Line-Up" finds Wile E. Coyote in a police station with a group of cops, and he's been given the chance to pick his tormentor out of a line up. He looks through the one-way glass as the perps -- Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, Beaky Buzzard and Road Runner -- each step forward and say, "Beep Beep." But Wile E. can't bring himself to ID the suspect, and Road Runner escapes again. "You know he's just gonna go out there and do this to you again," sighs an officer. The spot was conceived by Cartoon Network writer Chris Bieger. Other credits on the spot include creative director Pete Johnson and producer Ashley Nixon. Renegade's Darrell Van Citters directed the animation. Renegade Animation handled the compositing in-house where the challenge lay in integrating Wile E. Coyote into the dimly lit police station environment. "Color, light and shading are an integral part of this spot" explained Van Citters. "We needed to maintain the integrity of the classic look, yet make [the Coyote] appear a natural part of the live-action environment. What was equally important to the integration of this piece was underplaying the Coyote. There had to be a lot of past history going on behind the eyes. Subtlety was key." Renegade Animation has developed considerable expertise in integrating animated characters with live-action and in animating classic cartoon characters. The studio has animated many Warner Bros. characters, most notably, Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian for the Nike commercial "Aerospace Jordan." The studio has also animated well-known characters belonging to Disney, Nickelodeon and Paramount.
