Morty - 1957

One of the people I met during my animation days at Ron Clark Productions was Peter Donnelly. He came along by invitation of, I think, Harvey Collins and was starting up his own Advertising Agency, Graphic Advertising. Being under the impression that I was a capable artist, despite my lack of formal training and on the basis only of what he saw me doing at RCP, Peter convinced me to join his agency as a commercial artist.

WOW! Fulltime employment as an artist at 22 years old! One of those life-changing decisions to change employment, leaving behind 5 years as a clerk with the City Council (and the prospects of a lifetime career there) all the more significant because I had recently married a heap of new responsibilities.

It did not work out! I was far too slow and really needed that missing training. After only about 3 months, even Peter came to recognize my inadequacies and started looking for a replacement artist.
Meantime, I had been pursuing the idea of drawing comic strips and had worked up a sample strip called, "Morty". Unfortunately (?) by the time Peter had found his substitute artist, I had grown disillusioned with the whole Arts scene and my sensitivity was showing. So,when Peter saw my Morty strips and proposed that I try swapping jobs with the new man and take his place as Press Artist on the Brisbane Telegraph, I was not optimistic and declined his help, returning to "safe" clerical work.

So I will never know what course my career may have taken if the "Morty" artist had found favour with the newspaper editor and had gained a foothold into the door of Newspaper work at that time. It was to be another 24 years and a different career path before I found myself drawing regular cartoons and illustrations for a newspaper, albeit on a part time basis.

Here is my very first "Morty" strip. The rest can be found on my Morty page (see pages list to right),

if I get to post it there.