Cartoonist. He is best known for his illustrations and animation of the Walt Disney Productions character "Donald Duck", as well as his creation of cartoon character "Scrooge McDuck" and others during his long tenure writing and illustrating "Donald Duck" comic books. Born in a remote area of Oregon, his family moved to a larger, more populated area in 1908, and the transition would make an impression on him. In 1911, they had been successful enough to move to Santa Rosa, California, where they started cultivating vegetables and set up some orchards, but had to move back to Oregon when Carl Barks' mother died. He started taking various jobs but had little success in such occupations as a farmer, woodcutter, turner, mule driver, cowboy and printer, and was generally disillusioned by how eccentric, stubborn and unpredictable men, animals and machines can be. He would later claim this period of his life would later influence his work "Donald Duck" and in the creation of "Scrooge McDuck". Since his early childhood he spent his free time by drawing on any material he could find, and had attempted to improve his style by copying the drawings of his favorite comic strip artists from the newspapers where he could find them. By December 1918, he left his father's home to attempt to find a job in San Francisco, California. He worked for a while in a small publishing house while attempting to sell his drawings to newspapers and other printed material with little success. He continued searching for a job while attempting to sell his drawings. He soon managed to sell some of them to "Judge Magazine" and then started having success submitting to the Minneapolis-based Calgary-Eye-Opener, a racy men's cartoon magazine of the era. He was eventually hired as editor and scripted and drew most of the contents while continuing to sell occasional work to other magazines. In November 1935, when he learned that Walt Disney was seeking more artists for his studio, Barks decided to apply. He was approved for a try-out which entailed a move to Los Angeles, California. He was one of two in his class of trainees who was hired. He started at Disney Studios in 1935, more than a year after the debut of Donald Duck on June 9, 1934 in the short-animated film "The Wise Little Hen". His first story sale was the climax of "Modern Inventions", for a sequence where a robot barber chair gives "Donald Duck" a haircut on his bottom. In 1937 when "Donald Duck" became the star of his own series of cartoons instead of co-starring with "Mickey Mouse" and "Goofy" as previously, a new unit of storymen and animators was created devoted solely to this series. Though he originally just contributed gag ideas to some duck cartoons by 1937 Carl Barks was originating story ideas that were storyboarded and put into production. He collaborated on such cartoons as "Donald's Nephews" (1938), "Donald's Cousin Gus" (1939), "Mr. Duck Steps Out" (1940), "Timber" (1941), "The Vanishing Private" (1942) and "The Plastics Inventor" (1944). Unhappy at the emerging wartime working conditions at The Disney Studios, and bothered by ongoing sinus problems caused by the studio's air conditioning, Carl Barks quit in 1942. Shortly before quitting, he moonlighted as a comic book artist, contributing half the artwork for a one-shot comic book the other half of the art being done by story partner Jack Hannah titled "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold". He retired in 1966, but was persuaded by editor Chase Craig to continue to script stories for Western. The last new comic book story drawn by Carl Barks was a Daisy Duck tale "The Dainty Daredevil" published in Walt Disney Comics Digest. He passed away at the age of 99.