For Rodney Lambright II ’17, art is all about narrative. “It all derives from story for me,” he says. And ever since he was a student, his stories have been spilling from any medium he gets involved with, whether pen, brush, or computer program.
An Illinois native, Lambright went to high school in Racine and came to know the UW through PEOPLE — the Pre-college Educational Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence.
“It’s a visionary program that helps students of color have access and an opportunity to go to college,” he says. “It put the UW on my radar because every summer I ended up coming to Madison for what felt like summer camp but actually took us through various courses that helped prepare us.”
As a UW freshman, Lambright thought he wanted to be a fine artist, but after a couple of years, he began to wonder why. “I started to ask myself how I was going to make money off of this,” he says. “Did I even want to be an artist? I like storytelling, and I didn’t really know how that fit in the fine-arts space.”
His inspiration, he realized came from comics artists such as Aaron McGruder, who wrote the strip The Boondocks, and Bill Waterson, who wrote Calvin and Hobbes. Lambright felt far more interested in the comic strip he was writing, The Beatniks, than in his art courses. Then a communication arts class got him thinking about animation, and he began to see where his path lay.
Lambright took an internship in the scenic design department Wisconsin Public Television (WPT), where he worked on animated shorts for the show Wisconsin Life. Later, he helped do design work for educational video games such as Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case, a historical adventure game created in collaboration between WPT and the Field Day Lab, a UW-based video game design group. Lambright amassed an eclectic set of skills, which he now uses at his day job as a storyboard artist, designer, and animator for BUCK, a creative and brand-development firm. His work went into the feature film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and the video game Lets Revolution.
But while BUCK gives Lambright a paycheck, his art still draws him back to do his own storytelling. He recently published the first chapter of his debut graphic novel, Phantasma, on the site GlobalComix.
“It’s a sci-fi psychological thriller about this legendary character called the Cosmic Warrior,” Lambright says. “Essentially, his mission is to bring balance back to broken universe through the protection of an all-powerful energy known as Dark Matter. It is an epic series that follows the hero’s journey and the trials and tribulations that one must endure along the way to fulfill their destiny.”
Lambright’s own story, from PEOPLE to the UW to BUCK, has given him balance as well, along with a different perspective from most of those who work in his field.
“Unlike a lot of my current colleagues that went to art schools like Savannah College of Art and Design or Ringling College of Art and Design, I have found that my journey in my career has been a bit unorthodox,” he says. “But my experience at the UW has afforded me a different level of hunger and versatility in my artist endeavors. This can be contributed to the communities I built on campus and in some ways the necessity to curate my own path. This journey is one that I wouldn’t wish to change, even if I can.”
The Beatniks: Lambright’s first effort to create a comic was The Beatniks, “a slice-of-life comic that tells the story of seven middle school kids having regular life experiences.”
Lambright’s animation ideas come from a variety of sources. These illustrations were inspired by the power of nature and its ability to heal and restore the mind. “The juxtaposition of the vintage tech is an ironic nod to a much simpler time as I come to think about the evolution of technology and the rapid growth of AI — a nostalgic bliss that block out the noise that life can impose.” (Check out the full effect of the mice in motion.)
Lambright’s first major animation project was a collaboration between Wisconsin Public Television and the UW’s Field Day Lab to create a game called Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case. “Jo Wilder in the game is exploring how to be a historian and a student,” Lambright says. “It’s an adventure game, and I was doing a lot of world-building.”
Lambright’s first graphic novel is called Phantasma, and he published the initial chapter on a free site called GlobalComix. “Phantasma is a sci-fi psychological thriller about this legendary character called the Cosmic Warrior,” he says. “Essentially, he’s on a mission to save the universe.”
