Ted Richards (artist)

Ted Richards (born 1946) is an American web designer and cartoonist, best known for his underground comix.

Born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Richards developed his fascination for creating cartoons when he five years old. His father was in the Green Berets, and assignments kept the family living in different locations. After serving in the Air Force from 1962 to 1965, Richards moved to San Francisco when he was 23. He became friends with Gilbert Shelton and contributed to some issues of Shelton's The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. In 1976, Richard's The Forty Year Old Hippie was published in college newspapers and as a syndicated feature in weekly alternative tabloids. The feature had two collections from Rip Off Press.

Comics

In the mid-1970s, he was one of the contributors to the Air Pirates underground comic. The original nucleus of the Air Pirates collective began to form when Bobby London met Richards at the office of the Berkeley Tribe, an underground newspaper where both were staff cartoonists.

In 1977, Richards graduated from San Francisco State University, where he studied philosophy, creative writing, anthropology and industrial design. Over a decade, he worked full time as a cartoonist on E.Z. Wolf, Mellow Cat and Dopin' Dan. Richards recalled, "For me, the whole explosion, and the opportunities that this presented, is hard to describe. You could do about anything. It was an incredible, eclectic vision of art, design, storytelling, writing, color."

Web design

In 1987, he founded AdWare, providing software products and design services for computer clients, including Apple and MicroSoft. In the 1990s, he became a web site developer, offering enterprise-level development services, consulting, web design and information architecture.

External links

• Ted Richards official site
• Steffan, Dan. The ABCs of Autobio Comics