Who is the original illustrator of the Pink Panther?

Thank you Owlwings! Okay, so it was mostly teamwork in creating the character of Pink Panther! I would have very much liked to know WHO exactly got the idea of creating him. But there is something that is quite noteworthy, even if it was a team of different people, the consistency of the style of illustration and of course, the quality is astonishingly good. Only a few episodes that go by The Pink Panther and his Pals do not really stand out much, the panther himself too looks different and not so appealing than the original ones. Thanks for the great information once again!

I am not sure that it was really teamwork. Freleng was an animator who got his start in the same studio as Walt Disney. He later worked for Loony Toons. He was asked to create the character that an during the opening and closing credits of the movie Pink Panther. The character was popular enough that it firt spawned cartoons and later a TV show and a comic book. Pink Panther was actually the second movie to feature Peter Sellers as inspector Clouseau. The first was "A Shot in the Dark"; however, because the character became so popular, all of the later films had Pink Panther in the title and used the character again in the credits.

As you say, Burrito, Inspector Clouseau first appeared in "A Shot in the Dark" and the first 'Pink Panther' film was the second in the series. As I suggested, it was very likely Freleng himself who was created the Pink Panther character but, as is usual, his original drawing(s) would have been passed on to a team of animators who would work from sketches of the character in various positions and actually draw the cels necessary for animation. Animation (at least for any film of any consequence) is always very much teamwork and, though, Disney himself created, for example, Mickey Mouse, he did not draw the thousands of images required to make the film! He had a team of artists who were skilled at following his drawings exactly. This is not unlike the method of many of the greatest artists, especially for larger canvases. The artist himself would design the picture and probably paint the most important features - the faces of the main subjects, for example. It would then be left to assistants and apprentices to paint the detail ... background, clothing and so on. The whole project was, of course, done under the meticulous eye of the artist but many pictures in galleries today which are said to be by a single artist were, in fact, produced by a team of painters employed by him. It is nevertheless proper to say that the picture is by a particular artist, even though parts of it may have been painted by assistants. In short, the actual creation was very likely Freleng's but the animation was done by a team.