Vaughn Bode. That's why it looked familiar. I just forgot the name of the artist. You kind of forget that while Ralph Bakshi is a great animator, most of the art work is adapted from another source and has to resemble that style rather than his own.
That's funny about Freebird. I just saw this movie called Devil's Rejects produced by Rob Zombie and he was able to use it at the end of his movie. I guess licencing fees change over time.
I totally forgot that Bakshi worked on the old Spider-Man.
The Von Ghouls said:Bakshi also did Hey Good Lookin' set in the crudest 1950s ever seen and American Pop which had Big Brother's Summertime and Hendrix/Jefferson Airplane hits in the soundtrack. Bakshi wanted Freebird but the studio made them use Seger's Night Moves for the weak finale.
Believe it or not, Bakshi worked on the old Spiderman cartoons in the 1960s and later trained John K of Ren+Stimpy. In Wizards he was just trying out rotoscoping which is hand drawing over old movie footage with changes. He used this heavily in Lord of the Rings which I think is his best work ever and a great treatment of the first book and a half.
Unfortunately there was lawsuits over Wizards because the characters were blatantly lifted from Vaughn Bodé's Cheech Wizard. I'm not sure what happened with Fritz the Cat but creator R. Crumb was shattered as I remember.
There was another movie done with Frank Frazetta called Fire and Ice but the story was so miserable you even get tired of the great art. Bakshi was one of few Americans fighting against the Disney monopoly on animation for decades.