Carl Barks Equivalent for Cartoon Side?

[consultant]

I'm starting to collect select Disney subjects to hand down to my kids. Not big-bucks stuff. Me and the kids love Donald Duck, but from the cartoons, not the comics. It seems Carl Barks is an artist who represents a cross-collecting synergy that you get when combining comic book collectors with Disney collectors and wa la, you get very popular collectibles.

I've tried to read up some on his career. I'm wondering if someone can confirm/clarify a few things for me:

1. Carl Barks didn't invent the character Donald Duck correct? Disney did. He invented some of the other characters Scrooge McDuck is the famous one. (Yet for some reason Carl Barks seems to be equated as the Godfather/Inventory of Donald Duck to the casual observer based on the shear amount and value of all his Donald Duck stuff on the market)

2. Carl did very little (if any?) work on Donald Duck cartoons, most all of his work was on the comic books, right? So you have a different artist drawing Donald for his cartoons, and Carl doing the drawing for the comics?

So it seems his popularity is really bolstered by the fact, like baseball cards, he was involved with a highly collectible medium, comic books, from way back, that a lot of older adults (I'm only 39) probably read when they were young.

So if your primarily a Donald Duck cartoon fan, Carl's works really are probably not the best choice if that's your focus right?

If not, then who is the Artist to look for if you want to collect Donald Duck Cartoon related art?

 

[Dom13]

****REVISED****

There is no one person associated with Donald on the animation side as there is in the comics. Carl Barks started out as an animator but it wasn't long before he moved on to story. He and Jack Hannah were largely responsible for Donald's personality and the myriad of wild situations he found himself in. In the early '40s Barks left Disney to freelance on the Donald Duck comic books.

Al Taliaferro was the artist on the Donald Duck newspaper strip for almost 30 years. It's possible he got his start in animation but the animators associated with early Donald are Dick Lundy, Art Babbit and Dick Huemer. Due to the shear amount of work involved in producing even a 6 minute animated short (a minimum of 4300 drawings, often many more) there were many artists that worked on them. To make a monthly comic you only had to do maybe 30 pages.

Floyd Gottfredson may be another name to look in to. He is most famous for drawing the Mickey Mouse comics and newspaper strips but it's possible he drew some Donald's also.

Hopefully some others can fill in some blanks here.

 

[DisneyGuys]

So it seems his popularity is really bolstered by the fact, like baseball cards, he was involved with a highly collectible medium, comic books, from way back, that a lot of older adults (I'm only 39) probably read when they were young.

If not, then who is the Artist to look for if you want to collect Donald Duck Cartoon related art?

In my opinion (and it's not directly related to your question specifying "cartoon art," I think after Barks the artists best known for Donald Duck art are Bill Justice and currently Don "Ducky" Williams. These artists have each infused personality into their two dimensional ducks. Bill Justice had a very specific style of drawing that makes for a great duck, and "Ducky" really brings out the soul of Donald with the most integrity for a classic, handsome duck.

In the collectability range, both Bill Justice and Don Williams works hold their value and tend to appreciate (search for them on ebay). Both artists are still alive although Bill does not draw any longer. Bill was best known as a Disney animator (who is usually credited with creating Donald Ducks foils Chip & Dale). Don "Ducky" Williams continues to provide art that has many level of cross-collectability. He is well known for fine art productions including original art, limited edition lithographs, and theme park promotional as well as merchandise items. You probably already have some Don Williams art if you have visited Walt Disney World in the last 25+ years, but Don is rarely credited for his great art.

As for representations of Donald Duck, this is a photo of a current original work of art available at Art of Disney. It is priced at (I think) $5000. I think it is a great work of Donald Duck art.
(Well apparently, I can't post the link to the photo of the art as I don't have enough posts on DisBoards. Sorry... but if you go to donduckywilliams dot com and click on art and click on original........... )

http://www.disneyguys.com/Ducky/art/dw-original-2008-01-donald.jpg

Hopefully, this will open your eyes to some other great and well-known Donald Duck artists.

Enjoy,
Daniel

 

[Parkhopper_Vince]

Thanks for all the help on this subject. I edited the link into Daniel's post above.