Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dashawn Ricks. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Dashawn thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

Honestly, yes I really wish I did. I’ve always been told by my peers and family that I’ve got a really unique voice, and now I start to wonder how many opportunities I could have had if I invested a little bit more time into voice acting than my YouTube hobbies.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved everything about that, being able to create tons of videos just to get reactions or comments about what they liked or didn’t like. It was pure joy to me, despite how many views or the traction it would get, the best part about the creative medium is being able to express yourself with whatever you want to make!

And now I do voice acting! I’m aiming to become full time as well, there are some bumps in the road but I’m doing my best to make it a reality.

Dashawn , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Well! My name is Dashawn Ricks. I’m an African American voice actor based in Virginia, and I’ve been a voice actor for about a few years but I’ve decided to do more professional work ever since 2020! What really got me invested into the industry what just my fondness for story telling. I’ve spent my alot of my time in the early years on YouTube creating narrative like content, trying to tell my story to a large audience.

Overtime I fell in love with it so much that I wanted to get the taste, the thrill of being able to help others create something beautiful as well, which is what really led me into voice acting.

I’ve got a ton of inspirations that pushed me into this job field, but Dave Fennoy is honestly one of my biggest inspirations out there. I admire his work and it’s honestly one of the traits that I base my voice for characters when it comes to projects, I do try to make the role my own tho and not just flat out copy his techniques haha.

When it comes to projects, whenever I’m hired on board for something I really want to do my best to make the project really stand out on its own. Whether that be helping out the Dev with any ideas, marketing strategy’s, you name it! It doesn’t have to be another job with me, I want it to be an experience!

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I believe the best we can do as a society to move forward is to first stop treating everything as a competition. While yes there are some aspects of creativeness that can be a bit competitive in the industry, like being the first to create this or networking with the right people to get involved with a certain project. With this in mind, we really end up putting up walls, barriers between us and our fellow creators alike.

We form circles and groups of certain mediums and individuals that we should really “associate with” instead of just supporting other people who do the exact same thing as you.

The best example of folks just being good sports and calling for others to support one another, was a movement that started on twitter by the group that calls themselves “The Sunflower Club”. One day they pushed for a movement to support all up and coming artists, animators, indie productions. All just to share and get their names out there for other people to discover and follow them, by the end of the day, they got the hashtag #indieanimationday trending and the results could not be better!

So many studios networked with each other and for one full day, we all felt connected and we were all on the same page. We can be that, we can be better as a whole if we just moved past these invisible walls and learn to work together united!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My family man… I want to make them proud and I want to provide for them so that they no longer have to struggle or work anymore.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve left my home to go and become my grandmothers caretaker and to also pursue a voice over career. It’s been rough not gonna lie, but when I look back at all I’ve accomplished I couldn’t be happier!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dashawnricks.carrd.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dashawn_ricks/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/callmedashawn