character worldwide colour schemes

[The KKM]

just something I had fun wasting a bit of time on, and that might make for some interesting exchange of memories at least

worldwide, disney comics, especially back in the day, tended to have different colours in each reprint in each region, which has ended up making some different traditions as to what colours characters wear. what're some of your favourites?

for an example, here's three lineups I did with Gyro, Scrooge, Fethry

[thejcfreak]

Gyro's interesting because he's able to work all the color schemes fairly well. Fave is probably the middle one with the classic US colors - the yellow/tan look has a very nice 'working man/inventor' feel to it. That said, the Italian and Ducktales colors work well too.

I'll go with the obvious for Scrooge and say the classic Ducktales combo on the far right is my favorite. That said I'm also digging the classic gentleman's smoking jacket thing the 2nd left has going on. Feels like just the type of thing Scrooge would wear around the house. Some of the other colors are classic but they really don't feel right. The red/green and straight green and straight purple just don't work for me at all.

Fethry's another interesting case in which all the color schemes work fairly well. Brazilian color scheme is probably my favorite just for the yellow/red combination, though the weird purple/green hat from the french one is kinda neat too. Italy's a bit too red but not bad and the pink scheme is pretty soft on the eyes.

All in all I guess I favor what I view as traditional or nostalgic for me, even though all the colors have some positives and negatives.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Fairy interesting, and well-done ! (by the way, I'm new here, hello everybody)

As for my preferences:

The left Gyro is my all-times favorite with not a doubt.

Scrooge is… a more difficult case.
Let's start with the ones I hate, shall we ? I don't like him dressed up in green, I think it doesn't fit very well with his character. And I also hate it when the collar and cuffs are of this grayish color that Don Rosa tried to impose and that is currently used in IDW's colorings. I—DON'T—LIKE—IT.
The "red with green collar and cuffs" is… nice, I'll say, but I'm so used to the other colorings that it always feels weird to me, like this is some fantasy of the colorer that is not at all the canon version but that's still nice to look at.
I like it a lot when the button near the collar is golden.
A coloration you forgot to show is when his whole coat is red, a bit like the first one except of a brighter, less purple red.
My top favorites would be the "DuckTales" colors (on the far right, with the blue coat and red collar/cuffs), its reverse, and the "all-red" option.

For Fethry, I think all of the possibilities are fitting, but I'm more used to the far left's all-red coloring.

[edge]

Gyro I'm partial to as a red head. I just think it works best on him.

Scrooge I like in red/black, followed by either red/blue or blue/red.

Fethry I like in more of a purple color. It's a hard color to pull off with a lot of characters, but it works with his design.

[Deleted]

Gyro looks best in my opinion with brown hair and a white shirt. Maybe I'm just partial to Gladstone's coloring of Gyro. Dumb question: does the yellow strap hold Gyro's hat to his head or does it hold his hair to his head?
I'm used to seeing so many variations on Scrooge's coat that it's hard to pick a favorite color scheme for it. When I draw Scrooge, I tend to shade in the collar, cuffs and belt black to add contrast to the drawing, so I am partial to that one, but the red/grey, all purple and all green designs look nice, too. Blue with red trim looks good on TV, but it isn't my favorite of the various color schemes. The worst was purple with yellow trim that I recall seeing in a reprint somewhere.
I've only seen Fethry in red, and honestly, he isn't one of my favorite characters anyways, so I have no opinion on his coloring.
Another question: why is Gladstone sometimes colored to have blonde hair, but other times it is just left white?

[The KKM]

I always saw the strap as holding his hat, and the hair being natural in his head, but admittedly it's rare that the hair is drawn as "natural hair", looks like a toupee

[jubalpomp]

I like Italian colors, but Gyro is actually better in the second image.

Scrooge - I really hate seeing Scrooge colored in a different way than blue-red (as in last image) or red-black (I guess it's the most common, but it's not included in your image).

Fethry- I prefer him red, but also that yellow-red picture is really good. Where do they use it?

[The KKM]

It was the standard colour for Brazil. Nowadays I'd guess they use the Italian red for stories from Italy, no reason to alter the colours just for that, but reprints of S-Coded or B-Coded stories still use the yellow sweater.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

"dumb question: does the yellow strap hold Gyro's hat to his head or does it hold his hair to his head?": Depends on who you ask. In "Gyro's First Invention", Don Rosa explicitly said it hold the hat, but I remember reading a Gyro story (I think it was a Gyro one… not sure) where the whole point is that it holds his toupee, and at one point he looses it and we can see his bald skull, on which there are numerous humps (to phrenologistically reflect his many talents), and by some weird chance his skull's humps happen to mimic exactly the appearance of a planet he and another scientist were studying together. It was a dumb story. Very dumb story.

[LP]

I prefer Gyro as a brunette in a white shirt and a yellow hat. For Scrooge, I'd go with a red coat with grey/brown cuffs and white/grey spats. Since the characters are American, I guess I prefer the American colors for my head-canon. 

Fethry hasn't really got an American color scheme that has stuck (to my knowledge). I grew up reading stories with both pink and red Fethry, so this one is really hard for me to choose. But I guess I ultimately prefer the pink/purple one, since it's the weirdest one, and the one that fits his personality the best.

I thought I'd add color schemes for Donald and Gladstone too.


(1) Cartoons from the 30s, (2) Cartoons from the 40s, (3) Classic comics, (4) I guess "modern" comics, (5) "Modern" cartoons, (6) DuckTales 2017.


(1) American colors, (2) 'Race to the South Seas', (3) Egmont colors, (4) Italian comics, (5) DuckTales 1987, (6) DuckTales 2017.

My favorites for Donald are either 1 or 6, while my Gladstone favorite is number 1.

By the way, Barks also intended for Gyro's strap to hold his hat - not his hair. This is evident in 'Jet Witch' (W WDC 254-01) where we first see him without a hat (and without strap) and then with hat (and with strap).

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

Dec 2, 2018 19:48:47 GMT LP said:

I thought I'd add color schemes for Donald and Gladstone too.


(1) Cartoons from the 30s, (2) Cartoons from the 40s, (3) Classic comics, (4) I guess "modern" comics, (5) "Modern" cartoons, (6) DuckTales 2017.


(1) American colors, (2) 'Race to the South Seas', (3) Egmont colors, (4) Italian comics, (5) DuckTales 1987, (6) DuckTales 2017.

My favorites for Donald are either 1 or 6, while my Gladstone favorite is number 1.

Why do you call number Donal's number 3 classic comics? Was he colored like that in early Barks's stories? Since the Fantagraphics library has not gone yet before 1947 I only know early Barks in european recoloring.

Also, Italian Gladstone is blond.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Dec 2, 2018 19:48:47 GMT LP said:

I prefer Gyro as a brunette in a white shirt and a yellow hat. For Scrooge, I'd go with a red coat with grey/brown cuffs and white/grey spats. Since the characters are American, I guess I prefer the American colors for my head-canon. 

Fethry hasn't really got an American color scheme that has stuck (to my knowledge). I grew up reading stories with both pink and red Fethry, so this one is really hard for me to choose. But I guess I ultimately prefer the pink/purple one, since it's the weirdest one, and the one that fits his personality the best.

I thought I'd add color schemes for Donald and Gladstone too.


(1) Cartoons from the 30s, (2) Cartoons from the 40s, (3) Classic comics, (4) I guess "modern" comics, (5) "Modern" cartoons, (6) DuckTales 2017.


(1) American colors, (2) 'Race to the South Seas', (3) Egmont colors, (4) Italian comics, (5) DuckTales 1987, (6) DuckTales 2017.

Interesting! For Donald, I'm fine with 4 or 5, or an alternate possibility you fail to mention, the late-cartoons version, with no buttons on the front of the short, and the rest a sort of hybrid of 1 and 2. I like that one a lot too. 



There's also the variation of the above where the tie is red; they used this one in the 1990's cartoons. 



By the way, as I've said before, I really dislike his DuckTales 2017 colors, since in combining the comics' black shirt with the early cartoons' white beret, they made it so that there is no blue anywhere on him, which is just weird. 

Incidentally, the French Wiki's page about Donald's shirt (why yes, it has a page about Donald's shirt, why not?) has accounts of six different cuts of the shirt, which only partially overlaps with your six — since it doesn't worry about the color of the cuffs, or about the beret (whatever it may be), but does worry about the number of buttons. Here's the link.

For Gladstone, I prefer his Italian color scheme, but I'm also okay with the Egmont and DuckTales Classic colors. The American ones, to a lesser extent, maybe. Either way I'm more accepting of changes to Gladstone's color scheme than for any other character, as it would be entirely in-character of him to frequently change his wardrobe based on the current fashion. Heck, there's a hilarious theory out there that Gladstone does not, and has never done, laundry; he just throws away his clothes when they're dirty, and new, clean ones arrive at his doorstep through happenstance. 

Also, you missed his 1950's American comics color scheme, with blue bowtie and blue-green jacket, which I rather like:



There's also a variation of your #1, the modern American color scheme, where the tie is yellow instead of black. Not sure how I feel about it.



This from an unidentified European printing:



And finally, what appears to be Don Rosa's personal coloring preference, weird as it seems, since this appears to be one of those hand-made prints he gives out at conventions:

[LP]

Dec 2, 2018 21:03:04 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

Dec 2, 2018 19:48:47 GMT LP said:

I thought I'd add color schemes for Donald and Gladstone too.


(1) Cartoons from the 30s, (2) Cartoons from the 40s, (3) Classic comics, (4) I guess "modern" comics, (5) "Modern" cartoons, (6) DuckTales 2017.


(1) American colors, (2) 'Race to the South Seas', (3) Egmont colors, (4) Italian comics, (5) DuckTales 1987, (6) DuckTales 2017.

My favorites for Donald are either 1 or 6, while my Gladstone favorite is number 1.

Why do you call number Donal's number 3 classic comics? Was he colored like that in early Barks's stories? Since the Fantagraphics library has not gone yet before 1947 I only know early Barks in european recoloring.

Also, Italian Gladstone is blond.

The "names" aren't really important - they're just there to make identifying each version easier. I did struggle with coming up with these, but they're mostly accurate. I grew up reading my dad's Swedish Donald Duck-comics from the 70s, where Donald was indeed colored like that. (Maybe the buttons where white, though...)

As for Gladstone, I did not bother coloring the hair any different in any version. Egmont-Gladstone tends to be blonde too, but sometimes the yellow is so light, you barely notice. I focused more on their outfits.

[Spectrus]

I'm OK with both initial Gyros. I don't like the pale blue version that had been around for a while too, it looks odd.

[xanderares]

Dec 2, 2018 21:03:04 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

Also, Italian Gladstone is blond.

Not only Gladstone, in Italian comics they coloring many hair characters of blonde, especially women
, apart from Magica not many brunette are seen.