The character first appeared on the splash screen for the 1963 film of the same name, The Pink Panther, which recounts the adventures of bumbling French police inspector Jacques Clouseau. In the movie, “Pink Panther” is the name of a huge pink-colored diamond. Short stories about the treacherous panther, conceived to precede the movie, were so liked by the audience and the director himself that they developed into an independent animated series.
The animated credits for The Pink Panther movie, released in 1963, were created by Friz Freleng and David H. DePatie’s studio, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. Before founding his own studio, David DePatie was an executive at Warner Brothers, and Friz Freleng was one of its leading animators. It was the animated credits for the movie The Pink Panther which became the debut work of the newly formed studio.
The animators came up with the idea to turn a diamond into a tall and skinny wild pink cat with cunning eyes, chased by a clumsy man with a big nose. The credits turned out to be so funny that the United Artists studio decided to order a separate cartoon with this painted panther acting as the main character.
Thus, the Pink Panther separated once and for all from the feature films, and took on a bright pink life, acquiring not only an antagonist (the man), but also a separate movie, an animated series, a computerized incarnation, several comic books, and even criminal followers.
The first cartoon about the Pink Panther appeared in 1964 and was called “Pink Pajamas”. And the next episode of the animated series, released in 1965, won an Oscar in the category “Best Animated Short Film”. The first Pink Panther cartoons were also directed by Friz Freleng. Even though he has more than 300 animated short films to his credit, he has only one Oscar – just for “The Pink Rascal”.
The plot of each episode of the cartoon is simple to the point of outrageousness. There is The main character – Pink Panther, self-confident, arrogant, and a little stupid, who likes to get into all sorts of trouble and suffers from a pathological addiction to all things pink. There is her main adversary, Big Nose Man, whom Panther constantly bothers.
In general, from 1964 to 1980, 124 6-minute-length cartoons about Pink Panther were released. Then, in 1984-1985, there was a spin-off, Pink Panther and Sons, about pink kittens named Pinky and Punky. And in 1993, the big pink wildcat got an animated series “The Adventures of the Pink Panther”. By the way, only in this series, the panther begins to talk.
The Pink Panther is a famous character from feature and animated films, loved by many children and adults. And this character – carries much more than just a pink picture. And the proof of this is the following fact: on May 18, 2015, the inhabitants of the planet for the first time celebrated a new holiday – the Day of the Pink Panther.
What is Pink Panther?
Pink Panther is the name of one of the most popular and beloved animated characters after whom the franchise was named. The character first appeared on screen in the splash screen for the movie of the same name, released in 1963, and was only present in the splash screen accompanied by Henry Mancini’s music, which is still inextricably linked to the Pink Panther.
In terms of visual identity, The Pink Panther franchise does not invent anything new and uses the original style and drawings of Friz Freleng, created in the early 1960s. And, of course, everything is pink.
The iconic Pink Panther logo, created by Freleng, depicts the main character of the series, the Panther, drawn in its pink-colored fur with a charming smile. The cat has black eyes with yellow sclerae and an expressive mustache that gives him even more personality. The figure of the Panther is usually placed against a darker pink or white background and accompanied by handwritten lettering, executed in a sharp and slightly narrowed serif font, also with the use of pink shades in its uppercase characters.
The lettering from the logos of the Pink Panther franchise is usually set in a designer hand-drawn typeface with tall vertical bars and triangular serifs on their ends. There are no commercial analogs for the font, used in this insignia.
As for the color palette of the Pink Panther franchise, it is of course based on a smooth and tender shade of pink, a color of elegance and style. Yet the face of the wild cat character also has white, black, and yellow accents, which add brightness and strength.