I Have Always Loved This B. Kliban Cat-toon [re-post]

So now I will tell you a true story, but with names redacted to protect...well, not exactly the innocent but at least the nice... [1]

Many, many moons ago I worked for a studio that had optioned B. Kliban's cat cartoons.  Kliban at the time was enjoying a big surge in popularity because of his charming cat cartoons (most people not realizing he was also cranking stuff out for Penthouse, Playboy, & National Lampoon as well).

The Producer put one of his staff artists (whom we shall refer to as Jose' for reasons that will soon become obvious) in charge of supervising the cat "development".[2] Anyway, Jose' & the other staff artists were soon cranking out reams of cat designs.  Jose' did one batch & labeled them "Gatos" (which is Spanish for "cats", of course).

The Producer looked at 'em & said he liked 'em then asked, "Can we get this Gatos guy to work for us full time?"

When Jose' told us this we gave serious thot to creating a fictitious artist -- Raoul Gatos -- and scamming an extra paycheck from the studio.  We would have given credence to his existence by claiming to have worked with him at other studios, pretending to have phone conversations with him when the Producer was in earshot, telling the Producer when he came back from lunch that he had just missed Raoul who came by to drop off work, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Then we would open up a fake bank account in Raoul's name & split the extra income among us.

As I said, the Producer in question -- while not conversant in Spanish -- was basically a nice & decent guy, so in the end we decided against running our scam.

But if we had been working for the studio across the street...

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[1]  Those in the know will figure all this out asap.

[2]  Yeah, yeah, I know; you buy a concept based almost solely on the design style of a particular artist then you try to "improve" it by doing variations; go figure...