Other artists drawing over Barks' blueline sketches

creator of Duckburg and Scrooge McDuck

Postby Robb_K » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:48 pm

I always wondered why Tony Strobl's drawings based on Carl Barks sketches were so unlike Barks and so much like Strobl. That was especially frustrating when seeing how closely Daan Jippes stayed to Barks' lines and also did Mau Heymans. Even Don Rosa's drawings over Barks' sketches, admittedly, in his own style, still showed the basic idea that Barks had. While Strobl's work looked NOTHING like Barks. This was exasperating, given that Strobl said (paraphrased) that he so enjoyed working from Barks' sketches, as it left him little work to do. And yet he not only failed to stay anywhere near Barks' lines, but he also even RESTAGED panels!!!

To try to understand this better, I scanned Barks' original sketch pages (1st 3 pages of "The Pied Piper of Duckburg") into my computer. Then, I changed the line colour to light blue, and printed them out on a good bond paper in triple actual comic book size. Then I inked over them, carefully trying to stay on Barks' intended lines as much as possible. I am NOT a professional inker-and am a long way from it. My inking is TERRIBLE. And yet, when I look at my version, it looks a lot more like Barks to me than Don Rosa. But, Rosa purposely used his own style-so as to make sure that half the story didn't look like one artist, and the other half, another.

But what about Strobl? He was a professional artist, who drew decently in his own right. He had been an animator with Disney in The Golden Era. He had drawn decent Duck and Mouse comic book stories (1947-1957 (published into 1958). After that, I can't stand his style. But given even that, WHY did he not take advantage of having Barks' great sketches, instead of making the expressions much less expressive, and even changing to worse staging????

Here is Page 1 Top half, of my inking of "The Pied Piper of Duckburg":

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Postby Robb_K » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:50 pm

Hier is Pagina 1B:

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Last edited by Robb_K on Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Robb_K » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:52 pm

Hier is Pagina 2A:

Image
Last edited by Robb_K on Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Robb_K » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:54 pm

En hier-2B:

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Postby Robb_K » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:56 pm

Pagina 3A:

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Postby Robb_K » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:57 pm

En 3B:

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Postby Robb_K » Fri Aug 18, 2006 4:10 pm

Oops! Sorry, I forgot I was on the International Forum. I intend to put this thread on the Barks section of The Regular Dutch Forum, as well.

I didn't add any lines that Barks didn't have, other than adding Scrooge's sideburns (that he forgot to draw, on panel one of Page 2B. Otherwise, I didn't add even things he would have added in the inking, such as more $ on the drapes (not nearly as many as Rosa added), and so on. I did not ink Gyro's vest on the first 2 pages, as he hadn't drawn sketch lines delineating the portion breaks, and hadn't drawn the crosshatch lines on the back (as he had done on Page3).

I probably WILL do that eventually.
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Postby Rockerduck » Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:36 pm

You mixed up pages 1B and 2A.
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Postby Robb_K » Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:34 pm

Thanks, Rockerduck for pointing out the misnaming. Unfortunately, we have no edit function. So I cannot correct that problem. But what do you think of my theory that Strobl did all of us a major disservice?
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Postby Rockerduck » Sat Aug 19, 2006 5:39 pm

I never saw Strobl's versions (except for the first page of a story now and then in a Dutch album- used to compare Strobl with Jippes), so I can't really comment on that. From looking at those first pages, it seems like Strobl followed Barks' sketches, but did them just in his nown style. However, I have seen some Barks-sketches from 'King Scrooge the First' and some of Strobl's completed panels and they don't match. Strobl has a very different way of staging things than Barks. The Jippes-version (I've seen some panels, and I thought he's now working on it) do follow Barks' sketches exactly.

So, I think Jippes did a far better job than Strobl, whose style I dislike anyway. So I'm very grateful to Jippes for re-drawing these stories.
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Postby Daniel73 » Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:29 pm

Rockerduck wrote:You mixed up pages 1B and 2A.

Robb_K wrote:Thanks, Rockerduck for pointing out the misnaming. Unfortunately, we have no edit function. So I cannot correct that problem.

Yes, you can. The file-numbering is in the wrong order. If you rename them to the right order and upload them again to photobucket, the mix-up is corrected.

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j56/Robb_K/Piper2.jpg
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j56/Robb_K/Piper3.jpg
Piper2 should be renamed as Piper3, and vice versa.
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Postby Dukka » Sun Aug 20, 2006 1:01 pm

That's not necessary, I've edited the posts. Now you can read it in the right order.
"Someone has to make decisions. This is not a business for lame ducks."
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Postby Daniel73 » Sun Aug 20, 2006 10:48 pm

Dukka wrote:That's not necessary, I've edited the posts. Now you can read it in the right order.

Not when you've downloaded them. Then they are still in the wrong order.
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Postby Harry » Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:22 am

Robb_K wrote:I always wondered why Tony Strobl's drawings based on Carl Barks sketches were so unlike Barks and so much like Strobl.

Just to be sure: not ALL of Barks' JW stories were drawn by Strobl. Many were drawn by Kay Wright.
Dutch people who like to see a Wright drawing on a Barks story, can look in pocket book (2nd series) 21 or 35, "De bijzondere visvangst".
(Yes, they printed the *same* story in 2 pocket books!)

Robb_K wrote:That was especially frustrating when seeing how closely Daan Jippes stayed to Barks' lines and also did Mau Heymans.

I don't agree with you about Heymans. He changed the staging of some panels, and made the story look like a Heymans story.
I thing no-one is a master copyist like Jippes.

Robb_K wrote:And yet Strobl not only failed to stay anywhere near Barks' lines, but he also even RESTAGED panels!!!

It is the job of an artist to improve on the staging of a script, when he thinks it's necessary. This happens all the time.
At the time of Strobl's work, Barks's sketches were not "sacred" yet. They were just a script like any other script.

Robb_K wrote:Then I inked over them, carefully trying to stay on Barks' intended lines as much as possible.

And still, the pages look very much like Klein to me. :)

Robb_K wrote:But what about Strobl?

Have you seen the *scripts* that he made in the 1980s? They are in pencil form and look *much* better than his artwork.
(Strobl wrote some stories before he retired. These stories were (horribly) drawn by the Jaime Diaz studio.)

I tend to think that it's mainly the *inkers* of Strobl stories who make them look stiff and uninspired.
(Strobl hadn't inked a story since the 1950s.)
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Postby Daniel73 » Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:02 pm

Harry wrote:I don't agree with you about Heymans. He changed the staging of some panels, and made the story look like a Heymans story.

I have the impression that Mau Heymans can't draw trees and nature. His version of 'Music Hath Charms' looks like taking place in a park instead of in the woods. Just compare that with Jippes.
http://coa.inducks.org/coa/c1/story.php/0/H+92020

Harry wrote:
Robb_K wrote:And yet Strobl not only failed to stay anywhere near Barks' lines, but he also even RESTAGED panels!!!

It is the job of an artist to improve on the staging of a script, when he thinks it's necessary. This happens all the time.

But this is Barks. Daan Jippes and Mau Heymans are incapable of improving on Barks, as they both have shown. Also Jippes has restaged a panel:

Image
http://coa.inducks.org/story.php/0/H+98254

The first panel is an indoors scene in Barks's script. By changing it to an outdoors scene, Jippes's outdoors panel is an odd contrast to all the smoke and pollution in the next panels.
Barks's staging isn't only changed, but simply destroyed.

There are many apprentices who want to improve on their master, without having a clue. Few people seem to realize how much experience Barks had in staging scenes and timing, having worked at the Disney studio.

Barks is a professional comic book artist in the sense that he is skilled and knows what he's doing, both in writing and drawing.
Mau Heymans obviously uses tricks and recurring standard expressions in drawings. The more Mau draws the more obvious it gets that he can't draw. And Daan Jippes's 'Havank'-story has an awful bad timing, if any timing at all. It just goes on and on. And it looks like Jippes has drank too much coffee, as some panels are ridiculously busy.

Some artists seem to fall in love with their own ignorance, trying ways they should have practiced first. I've understood that Mau Heymans looks at himself as a great writer...
When I saw scripts of Mau in 2004, they first looked great to me. But after a while, especially after McDuck-discussions about scripting in 2005, I discovered that they're mostly terrible. There are scenes and chunks that look very interesting and Barks-like, but they look added together. Mau first draws panels and then decides what to keep in. Mostly his stories begin good, but fall flat around the 3rd page.

These people should think at least a hundred times before restaging any Barks.

And with 'Havank' I think Jippes sacrileged the original writers work. Havank is the name of the original author. It would be like drawing Barks stories by replacing Uncle Scrooge for Carl Barks himself.
Jippes isn't a copy-cat here, Jippes takes over someone else's work as if he's the creator himself. Turning the originla creator into a silly old man on sandals. I still can't believe that "my" Jippes got into such artistic crimes.

With Mau Heymans there's a funny example of a (2003?) story about Daisy making a Christmas dinner, without any dinner shown. There are some kettles and pots shown throughout the story, but you never get to see a real dinner. Mau asked me to judge this story after it was published, and I slammed the story down in a long email. Which apparently was a reason for Mau to get interested in me proofreading scripts. But as he kept playing the master and I kept playing the fan, this was a brief collaboration.

I helped improving three Mau stories, most notably a story about a violin player. This was terribly bad in script, just using a Barks idea of 'The Master Wrecker' (an insect on paper that changes what's written on the paper) and then a runaway ending... I suggested Mau to go further on the unfinished symphony mentioned on page 1, and provided him an ending about an expert being enthousiastic about Donald's finishing of the piece. I never got any credits for my work for Mau. As if he was Disney himself. Which makes me wonder how much he has used from others helping him out.


The more I get to know about these so-called Barks heirs, the more I realize that Carl Barks is dead nowadays.
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