I can't imagine Donald without his quacking voice in animation. Yes, it's hard to hear that voice in my head reading the comics, but a non-quacky Donald Duck in a medium with sound just isn't Donald anymore, IMHO.
As a child I often found it difficult to understand animated Donald, and for that reason disliked him as a character. Just sayin'.
So while I don't object to Donald being somewhat quacky-voiced on the new DuckTales, and I take Deb's point, I do hope they test-run his speech with some six-year-olds to see whether they can understand what he's saying.
And hey, if you could always understand everything animated Donald said when you were six, more power to you! I speak for myself alone. It drove me crazy.
I did of course like comics-Donald as a character, but I didn't "hear" him in the quacky voice.
I have heard even several amateurs mimic Donald's voice perfectly, speaking complicated sentences, and go on and on with it for many minutes. And, yet, it was all completely understandable. So, I don't believe those people who say it is impractical, and would be bad for sales and TV show ratings to have the ducklike speech, because viewers wouldn't understand the characters.
I would like to see a video of those people speaking complicated sentences in Donald's quacky voice for many minutes, since I have a hard time imagining it. In fact, as a mental experiment I tried to imagine how the following sentences (from Barks' "The Golden Helmet") would sound if they were spoken in a quacky voice:
"Ho hum! Yawn! Three months I've worked here, and not a doggoned thing has happened! The pay is good, and the hours short! Maybe I shouldn't kick! But I'm the rugged type! I like adventure — the kind of rip-snorting fun those old Vikings must have had! Think of it! Men crossed oceans in that old tub with nothing to guide them but the sun and the stars! They sailed to Iceland and Greenland and maybe even America hundreds of years before the Queen Mary! In the east wing! Go down corridor J! Turn left into corridor 9! It's the first room past the stuffed giraffe! Those old Vikings fought walruses and whales and savage tribes, and I tell goggle-eyed nature boys where to find butterflies! Oh, that the race of men could ever sink so low! [Another visitor asks Donald "Mister guard, where is the lace and tatting collection?"] Two doors past the crocheted doilies!... .. (Holy cow!) I'm going up on the deck of this old scow for a few minutes and pretend that I'm a he-man! Strange sails ahead, brave Norsemen! Stand by to lick the whole fleet! [Donald hears a "SQUEAK" sound] Must be a king-sized rat aboard! A man! Who the blazes...? Hey, you! Get outa here! This ship is to be seen, not pried apart! [Azure Blue says "I wasn't hurting anything! I was just curious to see how the deck was fastened down!"] You'll find charts of the ship in the library! Third door on the left after you pass the dinosaur egg! [Azure says "Charts! Bah!"] I've seen that guy here before! And he's always been nosing around this old Viking ship! He was prying up boards like he was looking for something! Now, what would anyone expect to find down here except slivers? All the gold and jewels would have been taken off the ship before the Vikings buried it! That guy was looking for something else — something he got wind of from an old Viking book, maybe! Those translators of ancient writing come across some strange secrets sometimes! Hmm! ... A loose peg! Well, whaddya know! It just takes brainsto find things! A roll of deerskin! Looks like a map! And there's ancient writing on it! I must tell the curator about this!
In my opinion it wouldn't be impossible to record these lines in a quacky voice, but it would sound ridiculous and mostly ununderstandable, clearly proving the point that comic book Donald doesn't speak in a quacky voice. We may suggest that an adaptation of "The Golden Helmet" could be done by simplifying Donald's lines and removing many of them, but this wouldn't disprove the notion of comic book Donald speaking in a normal voice; quite the opposite, it would further prove the point.
I usually go a step further in this argument, as I think not only that the comic version of Donald speaks nomally, but also that the Donald from the comics and the Donald from the animation are basically two different characters.
Last Edit: Dec 14, 2016 22:17:54 GMT by drakeborough
I always thought a way to solve this was to take advantage of digital recording and effectively do two recordings for donald's line- a quacking voice and a normal, understandable, similar-in-pitch voice, then overlap them.
We may suggest that an adaptation of "The Golden Helmet" could be done by simplifying Donald's lines and removing many of them, but this wouldn't disprove the notion of comic book Donald speaking in a normal voice; quite the opposite, it would further prove the point.
I usually go a step further in this argument, as I think not only that the comic version of Donald speaks nomally, but also that the Donald from the comics and the Donald from the animation are basically two different characters.
Yes, Comics-Donald and Cartoon-Donald are, in my mind, two different characters. But I cannot abide an animated version of Comics-Donald, speaking in a non-quacky voice. So, the best I can hope for is a Barksian cast of characters going on the type of adventures that Comics-Donald would normally participate in, but featuring a Cartoon-Donald instead of Comics-Donald, with vastly reduced and simplified lines, and the other characters shouldering much of the speaking role that would have gone to Comics-Donald. I get the impression that's where the DuckTales reboot is headed; if so, I'll be happy with it.
I always thought a way to solve this was to take advantage of digital recording and effectively do two recordings for donald's line- a quacking voice and a normal, understandable, similar-in-pitch voice, then overlap them.
This would be something similar to this old Italian dub of "Clock Cleaners", which has a "normal, understandable, similar-in-pitch voice" for Donald's lines in Italian, dubbed over Clarence Nash's original quacky voice speaking the English lines. It's not exactly the same thing that you described, since the two voices speak different lines in different languages, but it's the closest thing I could find.
It works fine for short cartoons relying on visual gags and with minimal dialogue, but I can't imagine it working in an hypothetical faithful adaptation of long, classic adventures from the comics. Indeed, I think the dialogue I posted in my previous message offers a neat example of a dialogue that is totally unfit to be read in a quacky voice, even with the tricks of the two recordings.
Of course the problem is that even though Disney knows a normal voice would be better in certain cases, they fear that the general public in the USA (which knows the clasic shorts but may not even know duck comics exist) would not accept a change in Donald's voice, so they keep it for fear of public outcry. HDL are less famous and iconic than Donald, so Disney didn't fear giving them normal voices when they were needed while keeping the duck voices for animated projects that rely more on slapstick.
Last Edit: Dec 14, 2016 22:23:38 GMT by drakeborough
Yes, Comics-Donald and Cartoon-Donald are, in my mind, two different characters. But I cannot abide an animated version of Comics-Donald, speaking in a non-quacky voice. So, the best I can hope for is a Barksian cast of characters going on the type of adventures that Comics-Donald would normally participate in, but featuring a Cartoon-Donald instead of Comics-Donald, with vastly reduced and simplified lines, and the other characters shouldering much of the speaking role that would have gone to Comics-Donald. I get the impression that's where the DuckTales reboot is headed; if so, I'll be happy with it.
I am glad I am not the only one to think of them as different characters.
On the other hand, I cannot understand your reasoning for not wanting an animated version of comic book Donald. This sounds like a strange idea to me: it would be like sayng that animated Beagle Boys with individual names, personalities and designs are different characters than comic book Beagle Boys, and then say you cannot abide comic book Beagle Boys making animated appearances. Ok, it was a random example and there are animated appearances of ordinary Beagle Boys outside DuckTales, but I think I made my point clear.
I would also add that I hope comic book characters would not be forever "hostages" of the DuckTales brand when it comes to animating them. Don't get me wrong, having another DuckTales is great because it is the closest thing we get to an adaptation of comic book scenarios when it comes to adventure and rarerly-used-in-animation characters, but I like to think that someday these characters will also have animated appearances without having the DT default changes (separate Beagle Boys, Scottish Glomgold living in Duckburg, DuckTales-only characters etc.) being made every time.
P.S.
There is a problem with the quotes in your message.
Last Edit: Dec 16, 2016 10:18:22 GMT by drakeborough
For me also, Cartoon Donald and Comics Donald are different characters. Unlike Baar Baar Jinx, I personally would like to have an animated Comics Donald sans quacky voice, but I think the plurality of posters here are correct in saying that the public in general would not accept that as Donald. So I'm just hoping for the least quackiness possible, to increase the comprehensibility quotient and allow him longer and more Barksian speaking parts.
Yes, drakeborough, I'd also love to see the comic book Ducks animated without the "DT default changes"--but since it looks like DuckTales is the only current route to Barks-aware depictions of the characters, like you I'll take what I can get. I'm OK with the DuckTales-only characters--I may even come to appreciate Webby, if she's less cutesy and sappy and PINK. And I can put up with Glomgold living in Duckburg and individuated Beagles. I'm hoping, though, that the writers avoid the sentimentalizing of Scrooge's character that took place in DT prime. And I'm wondering whether the boys will still be living with Scrooge. If Donald is incorporated into the main cast, does that mean he's home from the Navy? And if so, will the boys be living with him? Obviously that wouldn't prevent them from constantly going on adventures with Scrooge.
On the other hand, I cannot understand your reasoning for not wanting an animated version of comic book Donald. This sounds like a strange idea to me: it would be like sayng that animated Beagle Boys with individual names, personalities and designs are different characters than comic book Beagle Boys, and then say you cannot abide comic book Beagle Boys making animated appearances. Ok, it was a random example and there are animated appearances of ordinary Beagle Boys outside DuckTales, but I think I made my point clear.
I really can't explain why I wouldn't like to see an animated version of Comics-Donald, it's just something I've always felt, and I understand how it flies in the face of all my other arguments. I guess I like to see some kind of a "link" between the classic animated cartoons and the Barks-inspired adventure stories, even though that link is tenuous and obscure.
I hope the new DuckTales series rectifies a lot of the issues Barks fans had with the old series, i.e., it'd be great if the nephews live with Donald, the Beagle Boys are identical, Magica sounds Italian, Glomgold lives in South Africa, Gladstone is obnoxious, etc. I would also like to see a lot of the characters that are popular in comics but haven't had much of an animated appearance, like Grandma, Fethry, Neighbor Jones, etc. If we need to have Launchpad, Webby, Beakly and other DuckTales-specific characters as a trade-off, that'd be okay. The new DuckTales could be a nice hybrid between the classic comic universe and the old TV series. I guess we'll see.
As usual, I am with Baar Baar Jinx across the board, with the sole exception of Donald's voice. Yes to Grandma Duck and Fethry and heck, yes to Matilda! I wonder whether the Junior Woodchucks will be coed, or whether they'll put Webby in the Chickadees as was done in "The Arcadian Urn." Their immersion in Rosa's work would argue for the latter. If they want other Chickadees to fill out the ranks, they could find possibilities in the Dutch Duckies characters and the Italian GE girls like Litzy, in addition to AMJ. And I didn't even mention Magica's voice earlier...that's such a deal-breaker for me. The DT episode "Raiders of the Lost Harp" is on everyone's top ten list except mine, because I can't stand the utter wrongness of Russian Magica.
I really can't explain why I wouldn't like to see an animated version of Comics-Donald, it's just something I've always felt, and I understand how it flies in the face of all my other arguments. I guess I like to see some kind of a "link" between the classic animated cartoons and the Barks-inspired adventure stories, even though that link is tenuous and obscure.
You mean you dislike the very idea of Comics-Donald ever making an animated appearance, even if it were to happen in an hypothetical project making faithful adaptations of classics like "Lost In the Andes!", "The Golden Helmet", "The Old Castle's Secret", "A Christmas For Shacktown", "Voodoo Hoodoo" and so on?
I don't fully understand your reasoning, but to each his own, I guess. One thing does not rules out the other, so we can have some animated projects with Cartoon-Donald, other animated projects with Comics-Donald, and maybe even a third kind of an animated project, which would be a mix of the two like you want. But this is just talking (well, writing actually) since I am not the one making animated series for Disney (tough the DuckTales reboot was coincidentally announced shortly after I started thinking about, and writing in a forum, how it would be like to have a Disney animated project of Scrooge & Donald adventures in the spirit of classic duck comics).
I hope the new DuckTales series rectifies a lot of the issues Barks fans had with the old series, i.e., it'd be great if the nephews live with Donald, the Beagle Boys are identical, Magica sounds Italian, Glomgold lives in South Africa, Gladstone is obnoxious, etc. I would also like to see a lot of the characters that are popular in comics but haven't had much of an animated appearance, like Grandma, Fethry, Neighbor Jones, etc. If we need to have Launchpad, Webby, Beakly and other DuckTales-specific characters as a trade-off, that'd be okay. The new DuckTales could be a nice hybrid between the classic comic universe and the old TV series. I guess we'll see.
Like you, I hope they rectify what I also conider mistakes in the old series, but for some of them there's no use to hope: for example, it's already been confirmed that the Beagle Boys will be (unfortunately) portrayed as having distinct personalities and appearances.
I was disappointed to learn (relatively recently) that in the original version Magica has a Russian accent, as I was used to the Neapolitan accented version of the Italian dub, like in this clip.
