The backgrounds of Balto were all painted using either Gouache or oil paints. All backgrounds were blue printed out roughtly before being tidied up and made into detailed line drawings, then one of 2 types of paint were used. The gouache was used for paintings of the interior of buildings due to it's accuracy and sharpness. The oils were used for outdoor paintings especially when snow was involved.

These paintings below were all painted by Michael Hirsh, a background artist of the movie, all his paintings are truely wonderful and this small selection all have an interesting story behind...

This is the background to the medicine cabinate in the doctors office, painted with oils on 16 field. All the bottles were painted with 3 shades each so as the digitally coloured Aspirin bottle the doctor picks up will match. Also the bottle in the top left marked "Kirks" is a reference to Douglas Kirk who was the Layout Supervisor.

This one wasn't used in the movie, but it is a close up of the doctors desk. Look at the blotter pad on the desk, Michael Hirsh put a reversed version of his signiture on it.

Everyone should recognise this background! Painted with gouache on 40" X 28" paper (now thats a big painting!), there was a major accident with it as water was spilt over it and managed to get under the protective acetate cel! Michael managed to rescue it using an airbrush to wet the paint and touch it up. Personally I can't tell that it was damaged, now that is talaent!

Last one! This was done with Gouache on 16 field. Another one that didn't make it to the final version of the movie which is a real shame as the scene sounds interesting. The scene was dubbed "The Barrel Sequence" and featured Balto running into the hardware store and accidently causing chaos. I wish they had left it in, I have seen the story boards for it and it looked amusing