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Li’l Elvis and the Truckstoppers musical in the works

1997 animation, on which Rove Mcmanus worked as a young animator, is set to take to the stage.

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A stage show is in the pipeline based on 1997 – 98 animated series Li’l Elvis and the Truckstoppers.

Decades before Bluey, the ambitious cartoon series featured Australian accents and humour, with an Aboriginal character front and centre.

The series  by Peter Viska and Esben Storm was commissioned by the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. The voice cast included Stig Wemyss (Li’l Elvis), Kylie Belling (Lionel), David Cotter (Len Jones), Bill Ten Eyck (WC Moore), Michael Veitch (Duncan), Marg Downey (Janet Rig), Nick Giannopoulos (Hector) and the late comedian Lynda Gibson (Grace Jones). Wendy Stapleton was the singing voice of Li’l Elvis.

Rove McManus worked as an animator on the series, describing his job as constituting his “first 9 to 5 job”, years before he would become a TV star.

“I saw an ad in the Melbourne street press, they were looking for animators,” McManus said. “I gave them a call and asked if there was a chance I could do a voice role, but they had long before been cast and recorded.”Still, he persisted, convincing the producers he would be an asset in whatever role they could give him.

“I really cared, I was really invested in the show, I was passionate about animation and wanted the series to succeed,” he said.

McManus said at the time the Li’l Elvis production was beginning “I had only been in Melbourne a year or so”.

“I had not had a regular day job, I had only been a performer, that’s when I learnt what coffee was, working during the day [on Li’l Elvis] and performing at night.”

For much of the series, McManus was working with painted backgrounds and animation cels, using a flatbed scanner to import thousands of images into what was at the time a state-of-the-art computer system.

“I’d sit there for ages trying to get the colour balance right,” he remembered. “It wasn’t great technology.”

By the late 1990s, image-scanning technology had improved, but still struggled to capture the beautifully painted scenes, with their wide range of reds, oranges, yellows and violet hues.

“One day, when I didn’t do a good job of it, Peter Viska came in and got very mad at me, holding up the original background against the screen,” McManus said.

After that dressing down, “I worked hard and got it right”, he said — figuring out through trial and error what worked and what didn’t, keeping a notebook of scanning settings to achieve the desired result.

The stage production is expected to take place in 2023.

You can read more on the original series, including how it was almost never made, at ABC Online.

 

5 Responses

  1. Glory days of kids tv! I remember watching on the ABC as I was growing up. This along with shows like Wayne Manifesto, Round the Twist, Book Place, Blinky Bill, Bananas in Pyjamas, Crash Zone, Agro, Minty, Challenger, Amazing, Wipeout etc we really were spoilt for choice as we grew up. Very sad to such reduced offerings show.

  2. I was just as confused as a kid as I am today – why was a 90s Australian kids cartoon based around Elvis?
    Yes, I read the story.
    But who thought this made any sense?

    1. It was aimed at children, not educated adults. A talking koala, mute bear, human like toys etc don’t sound like they make sense either but in animation it’s all possible.

      1. Did you read my comment? I was a child when it aired.
        My siblings and I knew who Elvis was – he was an olden days American our grandma listened to.

        1. Did you watch the show? From my memory it had nothing really to do with Elvis Presley except the character’s name and fact he could sing.

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