Dudu De Doodle Analysis

By Yeo Chia Hui

Doodle artist, Dudu De Doodle, is the modern day joy giver. A superhero of sorts (think Robin Hood’s benevolent nature and Spiderman’s life behind the mask), he uses his art to cheer people up. As a way to bring happiness to one's day, he generally doodles on serviette, tissues, disposable cups then gives them away.

Making the decision to be anonymous, he goes by his artist name, Dudu, and has never disclosed his face to his fans － unless you’re lucky enough to catch him in the act. In fact, he revealed that “only one or two of my friends know that I’m the doodle artist. Why I don’t show my face is because this is an art platform, you only need to fall in love with my art; therefore, why do you need to know how I look like? I

So, who is he?

“People have this impression that I’m an otaku (a deeply introverted person who stays at home all the time and has no social life), but I'm not so I think their jaws will drop if they discover I’m just like the next average person,” he said with a chuckle.

His association with the otaku image may very well be related to the animated characters that so often grace his sketchpad.

“My role models are Hayao Miyazaki and Kim Jung Gi. The strong messages from Miyazaki’s animations have deeply inspired my artwork, while it’s fascinating to watch Kim draw using an ink brush with only his wild imagination as his guide. I can feel their passion towards traditional hand-drawn art just by looking at their art strokes.”

Dudu, an impeccably dressed man in his early thirties, professed to be a coffee enthusiast and this snippet of information that he freely divulged is backed by his artwork. His doodling, the fastest which usually takes him a few minutes to complete, is always interspersed with coffee in one way or another - be it using coffee as his tool or incorporating coffee into his characters’