Frame Grabs &Layout & Design 26 Oct 2009 08:31 am
Johnny VIta’s Fritz the Cat
- Johnny Vita was a staple in the NY animation industry for some time. When Ralph Bakshi got Fritz the Cat as a feature, he brought Johnny Vita along as his Background designer and artist. This was arguably the best decision Bakshi made on the film.
Vita went out with the storyboard and photographed locations that actually existed. His camera was all over Greenwich Village and Harlem. Then he took these photos and did a linear tracing of the settings. Then he colored the images with Luma dyes under the lines that he had traced. These brilliant colors gave the gritty images a luminescent appearance. He manipulated the images and purposed them as the film’s backgrounds. This gave the film a reality that it otherwise didn’t have, and it made the bigger job easier for Bakshi to realize.
This drawing by Ira Turek was traced from a photograph and
Xeroxed onto a cel and background paper. The BG was painted
by Johnny Vita and the cel with lines was placed over the BG.
This is a similar process that was used in 101 Dalmatians.
These photos were taken from a 1974 Print Magazine article
about Ralph Bakshi, whose Heavy Traffic had just been released.
The extra treat for New Yorkers was in seeing locations that were familiar to them. Oddly, all these years later, it still seems to work.
I’ve put together a number of these exterior background reconstructions from the first third of the film and present them as a sample of what Johnny Vita contributed to the film.
1(Click any image to enlarge.)
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on 27 Oct 2009 at 11:27 am 1.Richard O'Connor said …
In his book, Bakshi also claims working with Johnny Vita was one of his best decisions on Fritz.
I agree, but not simply because they are beautiful environments.
They remove the film completely from Crumb’s world and make it Bakshi’s. Ralph is at his most successful when he’s “true to himself”.
on 27 Oct 2009 at 1:10 pm 2.Eric Noble said …
These are some cool backgrounds. Bakshi definitely made a good choice when he got Johnny Vita. Thanks for putting these up.
on 28 Oct 2009 at 4:04 am 3.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
When I worked for Ralph he occassionally talked about Johnny Vita and Ira. He had a lot of affection and admiration for those guys.
on 09 Jan 2016 at 6:52 pm 4.Dee Saar said …
In doing a search on Johnny’s name, this posting came up and I’m so glad to see him acknowledged for his great talent and to see these images. Johnny Vita was a tenant (in Hollywood) and a close friend to my mother and me. He was an extraordinary person; one who embraced life and people with warmth and excitement and who just lit up the room with joy and laughter.
I have two cels with lines that were meant to go over the BG paintings that he left behind with my mother and I found them after she passed a few years ago. One is really cool – it has The Badass Fat Black Pussycat Theatre on the right hand side with a Cadillac parked in front. I don’t know what to do with these. Any ideas?
on 18 May 2016 at 12:18 am 5.Michael McDonnell said …
Johnny Vita was a friend of mine. As I looked over the backgrounds above, I was surprised that I remembered so many of them. The reason I had was because I was with him when many of them were shot. I first met him in, it must have been ’72. At the time, I had a studio in Nyack, N.Y., and Johnny, who was living over in, I think Portchester, near Rye, in Westchester County, showed up at my door one day. I’m giving you the short story here. Though he was quite a bit older, I having just gotten out of the Marine Corps, we became friends. We had an overlapping interest in photography, and he was a live wire, which I’d been accused of being, as well. We made several trips into Manhattan together, he shooting street scenes, and details, and I, women. But chastise me not. By the next year I had located in Manhattan and had become a fashion photographer. This is not about me, but to establish credibility, search: ‘An unknown called Madonna’ (Times Magazine of London article), and me on Getty Images, if you like. Madonna stumbled into my studio one day in ’78; no money, and 3 weeks in New York, and I spent 8 months running with her. Vita and I continued to hang around together, shot the streets, and one day in ’73, he took me to Bakshi’s, who, at the time, because of ‘Fritz’, everyone was talking about. . It was a smallish room with a circle of guys working on cels. Ralph was friendly to me, as were all of them. Johnny and I lost touch sometime after that, but I still think about him, actually had mentioned him to my daughter earlier this evening, and was moved to search him out. God bless my pal, Johnny Vita.
on 22 Apr 2020 at 1:21 am 6.Michael Mittelsdorf said …
Johnny Vita was my downstairs neighbor in an artist’s loft in Portchester, NY in 1985. He was warm, welcoming very sweet and funny.. I remember spending time in his loft while he painted and playing with his warren of ferrets. He had been established living there for some time as his loft was tricked out with a ferret enclosure, a giant rope swing made from and old factory door a loft bed that overlooked the entire place. He often shared what he was painting and asked my opinions on this or that. I will never forget his kindness and generosity nor his friendly, good nature!
on 01 Nov 2022 at 8:53 pm 7.The X-rated cartoon that shocked the US – B.N.V.C.A News said …
[…] travelled with his camera all around Greenwich Village and Harlem; the settings were traced over and then coloured with Luma dyes, creating an effect that’s realistic yet just slightly off-kilter, cartoonish, dreamlike – […]
on 11 Nov 2022 at 4:06 pm 8.Fritz the Cat at 50: The X-rated cartoon that shocked the US - Doncasterdaily said …
[…] travelled with his camera all around Greenwich Village and Harlem; the settings were traced over and then coloured with Luma dyes, creating an effect that’s realistic yet just slightly off-kilter, cartoonish, dreamlike – […]
on 19 Nov 2022 at 2:08 am 9.Fritz the Cat at 50: The X-rated cartoon that shocked the US – BBC – xvoli said …
[…] travelled with his camera all around Greenwich Village and Harlem; the settings were traced over and then coloured with Luma dyes, creating an effect that’s realistic yet just slightly off-kilter, cartoonish, dreamlike – […]