In the 1990s longtime retiree Carl Barks started a whole new career! All of his adult life he had been working in two dimensions: In-betweening work on animated shorts, comic book stories and paintings in oil and watercolour. Now he felt it was time for some three-dimensional work!
The making of figurines was entirely different from what Barks was used to. My job was to draw the ducks from all viewpoints: from the side, from behind, and directly full face, he stated, I was the guy who originated each pose and got all that feeling into Uncle Scrooge. That's captured in the figurines. My original vision is in each one.

So, Barks did not sculpture the figurines with his own hands. But he made all the numerous sketches necessary for other artists to take over. The figurines were then manufactured in either porcelain or bronze after he had approved the prototypes. Most of the ideas for the figurines originated from his painting motifs but a crucial difference: the figurines were made in more than one copy!