by Dudley Horque

About

Back in 1989, I was doing a bit more cartooning than I've been doing lately. I was involved in a few things in Bendigo. My character, Dudley the Echidna was the star of a calendar featuring Bendigo landmarks that year, and had just appeared in a television commercial. Along with delivery of regular community radio programmes, this sort of led to me doing a few things for the local arts magazine, Arts on Fire. I did some ad parodies and a few experimental cartoons. One of the experimental pieces was Dog, the Spot, who made 4 appearances, and was a surprise hit. At the time, I did not see much scope for continuing the strip, due to the seemingly limited scope, and my distraction by shiny objects (I think she came from Ouyen).

Dog was quite unlike anything else I'd done, and unlike the work I did after it. Typically, the most obvious influences on my cartooning are British weekly cartoonists, like Robert Nixon. Shortly after Dog, I had a period of comic book stuff which was a bit grittier.

Towards the end of the millenium, I took a year off from information technology to work exclusively as a cartoonist. Shiny objects got in the way again, and I ended up moving to Newcastle to take up another information technology job, and all but completely stopped doing any cartoons.

In late 2004, however, I found that my eyesight was failing. In 2005, I had a cataract removed from my left eye, and in 2006, I had the other eye done. There were complications, and I had to have 3 tears repaired in my right retina. This resulted in the vision in the replacement lense in right eye being shorten than planned. I found myself wanting to get back to do some cartooning, but found that my eyes did not really want to cooperate. It dawned on me, that resurrecting Dog the Spot, with its minimal artistic requirements, would be a good way for me to do this. I'm enjoying doing it again, and am even thinking about doing some other projects.