Jason Richardson wrote to us and asked us to share his story. Since we thought he seemed pretty cool, we were happy to award him “Nerd of the Month” for June!
1. What kind of nerd are you? Tell us about your work and the kind of people that are attracted to your work.
Answer: Well I’m a corporate graphic designer/comic book artist & writer who owns a geek culture website, convention, music festival, and I’m one of five hosts on the geek radio show Black Tribbles.
2. Have you always been a nerd? Was it tough when you were younger?
Answer: I’ve been a nerd for as long as I can remember, and it was difficult being a kid of color growing up in sub culture that is portrayed to be exclusively for a white male demographic. You get tired of hearing “You’re a sellout!”, or “You’re trying to be white.”
3. What kinds of things (nerdy or otherwise) did you do to prepare for what you’re doing today?
Answer: I used to program games when I was 12 on the Apple IIe. From there I made instruction manuals (so I could sell my games to locals, and make a magazine where you could subscribe to get codes and secrets that I programmed into the game. I was trying to be everything that Nintendo was. Nowadays, I listen to 4-8 hours of podcasts, read comics, play games, and study even more successful geeks in comics, games, and animation.
4. Do your nerd skills pay off with the ladies/gentlemen? Are you attracted to other nerds? What nerd qualities attract you most in a person?
Answer: It did, and now I’m married to a sexy geek. Hi Danae! <3 Well, most women saw it as interesting, which leads to me turning them into a geek or more of a geek. Maybe it all in how I present it to them. I tried not to get overly excited at first. I play cool and show them why they should be excited, followed by slowly getting them excited about geek culture.
5. Are you a Star Trek or Star Wars fan? What’s your favorite episode/movie?
Answer: I like both, but if I had to choose I would go with Star Wars. The hand drawn animated Clone Wars shorts were amazing! I also LOVE the Luke/Vader fight in Return of the Jedi, it was so dramatic and there was so much built up to that fight… Wow!.
6. What nerdy things do you do in your spare time?
Answer: Run my company (J1 Studios), coordinate my anime convention (J1-Con), as well as my music festival (J1 Music Fest), listen to podcasts, draw my comics, watch movies, and play video games on consoles, portable systems, and on my iPhone.
7. What’s your favorite nerdy film?
Answer: Transformers the animated movie. Still gets me to this day.
8. Do you play games on any game system (Xbox, Playstation, Wii, etc)? What’s your favorite game?
Answer: I own a PS3, a Wii, a 3DS, DS, PSP, a PC-FX (rare system), and I play a lot of seriously in-depth games on my iPhone.
9. Tell us about your nerd view of the future. What would your ideal nerd future include?
Answer: That the indie market gets a fair share of attention and appreciation in comparison to all the big dogs. That means seeing more indie entertainment being taken seriously more often than not. Also a more open geek weld to more ethnicities without being overly sensitive about everything. Enjoy what you enjoy, and don’t hate someone for liking something else. We’re all geeks after all!
10. What is the next nerd goal you’d like to accomplish?
Answer: To continue to take my company forward so that all of us in the company will be able to take of our children’s children financially and in the ways of nerdom!