SUMMARY IN ENGLISH

Ordföranden har ordet

Then-club president Olof Siverbo writes of how a story he penned was eventually published in the Dutch magazine Donald Duck in 2002 (some 18 years after it was submitted).

Marc Davis – Disneystudions "kvinnokarl"

Göran Broling writes about animator Marc Davis, who is particularly known for being responsible for some of the main female characters in Disney movies. The article is partly based on Brolings own correspondence with Marc Davis through the years.

Marc Davis was born in Bakersfield, California, on March 30, 1913. He got interested in drawing in his youth and studied at a number of Art schools. Finding employment as an artist in the US in the early ‘30s was no easy task, but in 1935 he was employed on a trial basis at Disney, at the Inbetween department. Marc first assisted Grim Natwick, one of the leading early animators at Disney, during the production of Snow White after which he spent 6 years working on Bambi.

The highlight of Marc’s career was animating – and being totally responsible for – the character Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatians. This was a groundbreaking movie in that it was the first movie to use the Xerox technique.

The planned sequel to this movie, Chanticleer, was eventually scrapped, much to Marc’s disappointment as he felt he had devoted a lot of time and done some of his best work for this project.

Apart from his work at the Disney studio, Marc taught evening classes in anatomy and design at Chouinard Institute, an Art school of considerable reputation, for 17 years.

In 1960, Marc was handpicked by Walt Disney himself to work at Disney Imagineering, where he designed most of the computerised characters at Disneyland, such as "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Country Bear Jamboree", "It’s A Small World" among others. He continued working for Disney until his retirement in 1978.

Göran Broling and Marc Davis corresponded with each other for many years, and every year Marc sent personally drawn Christmas cards, portraying himself, his wife Alice and their beloved dogs. Some of them are shown in NAFS(K)URIREN.

Marc Davis passed away on January 16, 2000.

Per-Erik Hedman – seriemanusförfattare

Olof Siverbo interviews Per-Erik Hedman, a prolific storywriter who has written around 400 Donald Duck stories.

Per-Erik Hedman was born in 1959 in a small town in Northern Sweden. In 1980, he began studying at an Art school in Holbaek, Denmark, where he also met his future wife. In early 1982, he moved permanently to Denmark with his family.

Before becoming a storywriter for Disney, Hedman had various jobs as an illustrator. In 1992, he began writing stories for Egmont, the Danish publishing company which produces Disney magazines for the Scandinavian countries. Right from the start, Hedman has submitted his stories in the shape of detailed scribbles, with the dialogue in English.

An early inspiration for Hedman was Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby series, which he felt had great technical, graphic and anatomic qualities. He also read Donald Duck while growing up in the ‘60s, especially the Mickey Mouse series drawn by Paul Murry.

In his own stories, Hedman generally avoids topics such as time travel, science fiction, other dimensions and supernatural events. He prefers to stick to everyday life, down-to-earth situations, usually with a happy ending. Beneath the surface, one of the most important themes is the relationships, the loyalty, among the characters.

Hedman describes the normal working procedure: four times a year the editorial staff sends a list of which series they’ll need (Mickey, Duck, Woodchuck etc.), how long the stories should be and, occasionally, specific details such as "Christmas story", "Olympics story" and so on. Hedman then submits a synopsis which the editors have a look at and after that Hedman produces a scribbled script to the editors.

In the early days, his favourite character was Mickey Mouse but these days he prefers Donald Duck.

When Hedman started writing stories for Disney, his work was uncredicted in the magazines, but this has now changed. As a freelancer, Hedman feels it was an important step forward and makes the writers feel more as part of a creative team. It has also led to interesting transatlantic collaborations, eg. the Mythos Island project with Pat and Carol McGreal and Unn Printz-Påhlsson.

Ny bok från Canemaker

After his first two books on Disney animation, Before the Animation Begins and Paper Dreams – The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards, author John Canemaker was asked if he’d be interested in writing a book about the legendary "Nine Old Men". Two of the Nine Old Men, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, encouraged him to make it a "warts’n’all" kind of book, and include failures and mistakes as well as successes.

The book was given the title Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men & The Art of Animation and was issued by Hyperion in 2001. It is 300 pages long with detailed biographies on each of the animators’ lives and talents. Canemaker has had access to the original drawings, many of which are printed in full colour.

This is a book which Göran Broling (author of the article) highly recommends to anyone with an interest in Disney animation.

Floyd Gottfredson – nyskapande musman

Axel Purvin writes about cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson, who is mainly known for his Mickey Mouse work.

Floyd Gottfredson is the Carl Barks of the Mickey Mouse world. For 25 years he drew Mickey Mouse stories, inspiring many of his successors.

Floyd was born in Kansasville, Utah, on May 5, 1905. He got interested in drawing as a child when his favourite was George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. In 1929, Floyd moved to California and was employed by Disney where he soon started doing Mickey Mouse strips for the daily papers.

As well as drawing Mickey Mouse stories, Gottfredson also invented several new characters, such as The Phantom Blot, Black Pete, Eega Beeva and many others. The article mainly focuses on the less known characters that Gottfredson created.

Floyd Gottfredson died aged 81 on July 22, 1986.

Tradition och nyskapande – intervju med översättare Stefan Diös

Åsa Johansson interviews longtime Donald Duck translator and NAFS(K) co-founder Stefan Diös about his work as a translator.

Stefan Diös is one of the founders of NAFS(K) and makes a living translating Disney comics into Swedish, which he has been working with since early 1985.

It was via NAFS(K) that he got the job. In the ‘80s, NAFS(K) had a fair deal of correspondence with the Swedish publishers and often expressed dissatisfaction with the stories and translations of the stories in those years. As a where, the publishers were at that point in time looking for a new translator and decided to give Stefan a chance on a trial basis. He has been there ever since.

In this interview, Stefan talks about some of the challenges involved when translating Disney comics, like keeping track of which of the occasional characters that have appeared on a previous occasion and what name they were given previously. Other challenges include translating word plays, keeping the language timeless through different eras while at the same time trying to refresh it a bit. Especially when classic series from the ‘50s are re-published it is important to maintain a good balance between tradition and innovation.

A particular challenge is the word "uncle" which in Swedish can be translated into two different words meaning "father’s brother" and "mother’s brother". In Swedish Donald Duck series "uncle" has always been translated into "father’s brother", which of course is the contrary to the original, where "uncle" refer to Donalds mother’s brother. In 1997, Don Rosa wrote a story that tells of the first meeting between Uncle Scrooge and Donald. Scrooge then says: "I am your uncle. Your mother’s brother". Because of the tradition in translating the word "uncle" into "father’s brother" it is not possible to translate this quote well into Swedish and it was a real dilemma for Stefan.

Stefan gets material to translate from the publishers on a regular basis, usually around two months before it is to be published. The first thing Stefan does is to check up facts regarding these series, such as credits and if they’ve been published before and if so, in which edition of the magazine. During translating, Internet is very useful, both when it comes to checking facts and to keep in contact via e-mail with the writers. Before Internet, Stefan would spend hours at the local library, checking facts.

Of the currently active writers he translates, Don Rosa’s work usually takes the longest time, because he has lots of factual details and has done a lot of research before he writes his stories.

On average, it takes a couple of working days to translate an edition of the Swedish Donald Duck magazine, but if it features a Don Rosa story it can take up to a week to complete the task.

The aspects of his job that he enjoys the most are the language and the characters. Stefan has always been interested in languages and in his youth he used to translate chapters in novels, from English to Swedish, just for fun. The most inspiring Disney stories, he feels, are those which feature a few wordplays and/or historical facts and/or silly nonsense facts.

One of the differences between the early days and the present is that today there are more serious writers, who have grown up with Disney comics and know the characters really well. His all-time favourite writers are Carl Barks and Don Rosa.

Stefan has been translating Disney comics for 19 years now and has no plans to retire any time soon as he still enjoys his work very much.

The summary and translation are made by koll. 2697 Stefan Warnqvist

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[NAFS(K)] [NAFS(K)URIREN] [NK 34] 10 april 2006 / Johan Blixt / webmaster@nafsk.se