ANIMATION
As
soon as Barks had been hired to work for Disney's in 1935 he was
sent to the company's art school. Only four made it and Barks was
one of them. Afterwards he was set to work as an in-betweener at
20 dollars a week. Supposedly, Barks' extraordinary talents were
spotted early in his first months, because this weekly pay was 2
dollars more than the other beginners received.
Barks worked in the department for six months - but he was not
pleased. It was tedious work spending days on end drawing endless
cels with painfully little movement. Early on he decided that if
he was going to continue as a drawing artist it should be with
something considerably more interesting - like comic books. Still
he developed his skills and learned the tricks of the trade which
all paid out later in his life.
In 1936 Barks did on his own initiative deliver a sketch idea to the team currently working on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The very rough idea sketch describes how one of the dwarfs uses a measuring worm to measure the length of a board. The idea was never considered... |
Barks' first encounter with the work of the Disney Studios was the cartoon Three Little Pigs from 1933 which he saw in the local cinema. He was later put to work as an in-betweener on a sequel called Three Little Wolves from 1936. |
One of the first animated shorts that Barks took part in was Donald's Ostrich from 1937. It was a nine-minute cartoon - the very first in the Donald Duck series - animated by Jack Hannah and directed by Jack Kinney. Harry Reeves and Barks wrote the script and Barks also produced a modelsheet for Hannah to follow. |
While Barks was working in the story department at the Disney studios he got the opportunity to contribute gags for the upcoming Bambi feature animated film which was released in 1942. He was the one who hatched the memorable scene in which the faun encounters an icy lake for the first time in its life and he contributed a series of roughs showing the action. Some of them are shown here in sequence. |
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| http://www.cbarks.dk/thedisneystudiosanimation.htm | Date 2006-03-14 |
