Carson Van Osten (September 24, 1945 – December 22, 2015) was an American comics creator and

musician A musician is a person who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate one who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters who wri ...

Early life

Van Osten studied at the

Philadelphia College of Art Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since 1 ...

Career

Music

In 1966, he played in the band Woody's Truck Stop, before forming the rock group

Nazz The Nazz was an American rock band formed in Philadelphia in 1967. The group was founded by guitarist and principal songwriter Todd Rundgren and bassist Carson Van Osten. Drummer Thom Mooney and vocalist/keyboardist Robert "Stewkey" Antoni joi ...

with

Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...

and Thom Mooney in 1967. Van Osten was the band's bass guitarist. He quit Nazz in 1969.

Comics

Later, Van Osten became a writer and artist of

Disney comics Disney comics are comic books and comic strips featuring characters created by the Walt Disney Company, including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The first Disney comics were newspaper strips appearing from 1930 on, starting with ...

. From 1969 to 1976, he created

Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an animated cartoon Character (arts), character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime mascot of The Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red sho ...

and

Goofy Goofy is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. He is a tall, Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic dog who typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled f ...

comics for the publisher Disney Studio, which produced comics for the European market. Starting in 1976, he was art director for Disney's

comic strips A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics ter ...

department in the 1980s. After that, he sporadically worked on new

, including some covers and the adaptation of the '' Atlantis: The Lost Empire'' film. He also created ''

The Wuzzles ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

'' for Disney Television Animation which was based on an idea pitched by then Disney CEO

Michael Eisner Michael Dammann Eisner (born March 7, 1942) is an American businessman and former chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Walt Disney Company from September 1984 to September 2005. Prior to Disney, Eisner was president of rival film st ...

. On August 7, 2015, Van Osten was one of 10 individuals who were honored with a Disney Legends award.

Model railroading

Van Osten created an

N scale N scale is a popular model railway scale. Depending upon the manufacturer (or country), the scale ranges from 1:148 to 1:160. In all cases, the ''gauge'' (the distance between the rails) is . The term N ''gauge'' refers to the track dimensions, ...

model railroad, the Rio Poco, that was featured in the June 1991 issue of ''

Model Railroader ''Model Railroader'' (''MR'') is an American magazine about the hobby of model railroading. Founded in 1934 by Al C. Kalmbach, it is published monthly by Kalmbach Media of Waukesha, Wisconsin. Commonly found on newsstands and in libraries, it pr ...

'' magazine. The layout was influenced by fellow Disney employee John Olson.

Death

He died on December 22, 2015.

References

External links

*
Carson Van Osten
in

Lambiek Galerie Lambiek is a Dutch comic book store and art gallery in Amsterdam, founded on November 8, 1968 by Kees Kousemaker (, – Bussum, ), though since 2007, his son Boris Kousemaker is the current owner. From 1968 to 2015, it was located ...

's Comiclopedia
Carson Van Osten's "Comic Strip Artist's Kit"
1945 births 2015 deaths American comics artists American comics writers American rock bass guitarists American male bass guitarists American comic strip cartoonists University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni American male guitarists 20th-century American guitarists Disney comics writers Disney comics artists {{US-bass-guitarist-stub