Interview With "Spot" Creator Eric Hill
Eric Hill talks about how he came to create the world famous character Spot the Dog. Find out about his inspiration for the books, the way the series developed and watch Eric at work.
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Step 1:
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Spot the dog:
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Spot was done originally as a story for my young son, Christopher, when he was two years old. I was working on some advertising material, which involved the idea of a flap. I was just trying to make something work and I noticed that he took great interest in what I was doing, what came through. And what I had done was a funny drawing of a man in a bowler hat in his hand, and I made the flaps of the hand come down, and underneath was the bowler was a bird and a nest and he immediately chuckled. And it gave me the idea, and I thought, this is wonderful. I can do that. And so I developed the idea of Spot from that moment with the flap, and of course the idea of using a puppy was a very natural one to me, because I love dogs.
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Step 2:
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The original spot:
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This is the first book I did for Christopher. The interesting thing was that when I designed or wrote the story, and illustrated it, I had no intention that it was going to be a published book.
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Step 3:
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Spot's family:
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Well, Spot's family, of course, is the backbone of the books. When I started the first book it was all to do with the mom, Sally, looking for Spot throughout the book. From then on we progressed, and Spot's father came into the story. Of course, he was a working dog, on a farm, so he couldn't have time to appear in the early books. And there was a sister that came along. After the sister, it seemed that the right thing to do then was to provide the grandparents.
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Step 4:
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Drawing the grandparents:
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I'd observed my own dogs as they grow older, they get a little bit ruffled around the head, and so I decided to give that look to the grandparents, just by introducing a little ruffledness on the head, around the ears, and on the rest of the body.
Now that the grandparents have joined Spot, I think that we've got our full crew on board.
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Step 5:
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Spot's stories:
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The stories themselves are based on very everyday happenings. It's essentially a family story. It's Spot, and his parents, and his friends, and his immediate adventures. They all take place in a very naturalistic manner. They go for a walk with his friends. His father takes him to the pond to feed ducks. They sail a boat. They have a birthday to celebrate. They're all very natural and easily identified situations. And of course, this is the good thing about it, it's able to be transformed into all the many languages, simply because this is a style of life that many young children have, anywhere in the world.
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Step 6:
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Changes over time:
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We really have tried to broaden the visual appeal of Spot. Over the years, Spot has changed, in book format, in style, covers, videos and sound, all sorts of different variations. He started out with a plain white background, and we moved on to colour. The interesting thing is, he has never changed his character style. He can't tell jokes.
