About Nichole Robinson
Being a tall Black child, Nicole Robinson would always get asked if she was going to play basketball. In protest of the questions and assumptions, Robinson started drawing. In her words, all she wanted to do was draw and learn Japanese. As her skills developed so did another interest: comics. While working at a daycare, Robinson discovered that comics were a pretty big deal among 4 year old's who wanted to dress up on any given day to portray super heroes. On one of these days during recess, a little black girl asked to join in the group (made of 4-year-old white boys). She was promptly shut down. Although Robinson tried to come to the girl’s aid by name dropping black women and girl superheroes to convince the group that the girl could play a superhero too, it did little to convince them that she had something worthy to contribute. From then on, Robinson knew that she had to make comics and stories, not just for herself but for that little girl and everyone who needed to see themselves as a superhero and for others to know that they could be. This led Robinson to also create a meetup group in Portland for creatives of color to learn how to draw, make and distribute their own comic books. Currently working for ABA teaching adolescents and teens with mental disabilities, Robinson is creating a comic that helps people learn how to navigate relationships, sexuality, anxiety and illness. Check out Robinson’s story here.
In Her Own Words
My goal is the destroy the European beauty standard by making media that depicts everyone despite gender, romantic orientation, size, race, religion, and disability status desirable. I’ll give kids heroes that look like them. My main goals are to make comics, children’s books, and dating simulators.
Notable Time Stamps:
1:32 Not too many extracurriculars. Work has been crazy and stressful
2:26 Video games
5:37 At Portland State taking David Walker’s class
6:09 Self Taught
9:55 Anyone is welcome to come to the comic creator meetup…all kinds of people wiho have skills and resources
12:00 The premise of my comic is – I am personifying fonts and typefaces.
13:15 I’m really into talking about fonts and the history of fonts. At one point I did make my own font.
16:08 Font Ownership and doing a font comic
19:05 Developing a shorthand and speed
20:30 I work in ABA – I teach kids with developmental disabilities. I’m teaching kids basically communication skills, ages 3- 16 years old.
23:07 Unpacking social skills, relationships, polyamory, spoon theory, love languages and learning/teaching styles, social anxiety, invisible illness in my comic (things that are not taught in school)
26:10 Slice of life is my genre. Interpersonal lives...
30:12 Always a good drawer, got a lot of praise for it growing up. Just wanted to learn Japanese and draw. I used to work in daycare and comics were always a big thing in daycare.
33: 26 I’m going to make comics – at that point representation was very important to me.
35:17 I want all kids to know they can be useful, go out there and have fun.
Key Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DakkyComics
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dakkycomics/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dakkycomics/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dakkycomics
