 In 1969 , Ralph 's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for Coca @-@ Cola and Max , the 2000 @-@ Year @-@ Old Mouse , a series of educational shorts paid for by Encyclopædia Britannica . However , Bakshi was uninterested in the kind of animation he was producing , and wanted to produce something personal . Bakshi soon developed Heavy Traffic , a tale of inner @-@ city street life . Steve Krantz told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund Heavy Traffic because of its content and Bakshi 's lack of film experience . Bakshi directed 1972 's Fritz the Cat , an adaptation of Robert Crumb 's comic strip of the same name . The financial success of Fritz the Cat allowed Bakshi to produce the film he had always intended to produce , and to focus on human characters rather than anthropomorphic animals . Bakshi pitched Heavy Traffic to Samuel Z. Arkoff , who took an interest in Bakshi 's take on the " tortured underground cartoonist " , and agreed to fund the film . 
