The tools
I have used Microsoft Excel 2002 in order to save and process the raw-material, and the built in diagram-builder to generate the diagrams used in these pages.
|
|
Microsoft Excel 2002
A recommended tool
|
Phase I - Collecting the data
The data used in these analyses have carefully been collected by counting every page, and every panel on every page, of every Disney-story so far done by Don Rosa. This resulted in 1379 lines of data - one line per page. The counting has followed the following standards:
- Where multiple versions of a story exist I have counted the single-part version.
- US-versions of the stories have been counted where such exist.
- Where one or more smaller panels/drawings are drawn inside another larger panel, the smaller drawings have been counted as independent panels unless they have been regarded as zooms and thus as natural part(s) of the larger panel.
|
|
D 2000-002
DD: The Three Caballeros Ride Again (2000)
Page 23, panel 10
|
Example 1:
A typical zoom-panel included in a larger panel - totally counted as one single panel.
|
|
D 91192
U$: War of the Wendigo (1991)
Page 17, panels 1-2
|
Example 2:
A situation where the small panel is a part of the sequence of the story. In this example the small panel shows the situation a short moment BEFORE the situation in the large panel, as the workers still are inside the truck in the small panel, and are running away from the very same truck in the large panel. These panels are thus counted as two separate panels.
Phase II - Processing the data
In order to analyse the data and to create graphical presentations, the data has been organized in larger and thus more appropriate units. This has been done by the following principles:
Step 1:
The data of the primary raw-material have been summarized for each story, so that each new line of data included the number of pages and the number of panels for one story. This gives 82 lines of data - one line per story.
Step 2:
The data of the secondary raw-material produced in step 1 has been summarized for each production year. This gives 17 lines of data - one line per year. Due to several reasons that's unfortunately not a very easy task. These reasons are:
- Unlike Carl Barks, Don Rosa doesn't keep track of when his stories are accepted by a publisher and/or finished.
- Don Rosa has done stories for multiple publishers with varying policy for creating story codes. Gladstone, for instance, did not include the year at all in their codes, while the codes on the Dutch Oberon-stories shows the year the plot was finished, not when Don Rosa drew them. When it comes to Egmont, the codes are not assigned when a story is completed, but when the script is accepted by Egmont.
I have thus used the following methods in order to bring up estimated production years:
- The pre-Egmont stories are sorted by the approximate year of production given in D.U.C.K.hunt's former "Don Rosa stories index". See The raw-material.
- The stories done for Egmont, Picsou and the German Tempo Magazine are sorted by the year given in their respective story-codes.
Phase III - The analyses
In this section I have used three sorts of analyses:
- Basic staple diagrams showing the actual situation year by year.
- Graphs based upon the moving average principle. Shortly explained; this is referring to longer periods (in these pages periods of four years) in stead of only one year, but still with one year steps (first period is 1986-1989 followed by 1987-1990, etc.). This gives smoother curves less affected by random variations in the analysed material.
- Multi-variable comparison. This is done the following way:
We would like to compare to sets of data, let's say Don Rosa's annual production measured in number of pages (data set 1) and the same production measured in number of panels (data set 2).
- The average value (344,1 pages) of the data given in data set 1 (annual production of pages) is set to 100. This is done by dividing that number by 3,441. All data in data set 1 is thus divided by 3,441.
- The procedure is repeated with the data in data set 2. The average value (2844,6 panels) of the data given in data set 2 (annual production of panels) is set to 100. This is done by dividing that number by 28,446. All data in data set 2 is thus divided by 28,446.
- Now we got two new directly comparable, sets of data where four year periods with productivity below the average will now have a number below 100, while periods with productivity above the average will now have a number above 100.
Art: Don Rosa. Text and graphics: Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr. Layout: Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr..
Note: The copyrights to all art in these pages are held by Walt Disney Co.
|
