Monday 6 February 2017

Ventriloquist Cat Backgrounds

Johnny Johnsen was a versatile background artist, rendering cityscapes and the vast outdoors equally well. There are no long pans over vistas in Ventriloquist Cat (released 1950) as in some of the other cartoons he worked on, but here are some examples of his work. Note the well-drawn refrigerator.



Tex Avery has an odd sense of time in this cartoon. These last two backgrounds are from scenes that follow each other, in terms of plot, by a minute or so. Yet it has quickly become dusk.



Avery gets his sense of time back at the end of the cartoon, as the colours change, showing the dogs have been after the cat for hours.

1 comment:

  1. It's interesting to contrast and compare this one to the CinemaScope remake, "Cat's Meow", where not only are the backgrounds far more stylized and sparser, but the decision was made to change the colors on both the cat at Spike to brighter ones than in the original (the other Avery 'Scope remake, "Millionaire Droopy' also has Don Driscoll's more UPA-ish backgrounds, but keeps the same colors on Droopy and Spike as in "Wags to Riches").

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