Current Vine

By Denise Tong

Most people aren’t allowed to spend their workdays pondering comic books and video games. Native New Yorker Greg Lambrakis, however, lives and breathes them as a concept artist.

A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Lambrakis grew up on Nintendo classics Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and Marvel Comics classics Spider-Man and X-Men. As a teen he moved on to video games including Warcraft and Diablo, and began reading various underground publications and horror books like Tales from the Crypt.

Now, Lambrakis channels his lifelong gaming and fantasy interests into his work, focusing on producing art for games and Web sites. As a character designer and illustrator, he envisions and paints characters and scenery; he has also applies his graphic design skills to marketing artwork.

Lambrakis sat down with Current Vine to chat about the popularity of fantasy stories and the inherent nerdiness of monsters with sunglasses.

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CV: How did your interest in art begin?

GL: When I was a kid, I’d sit around drawing the stuff I saw in comic books, coin-operated games, and Saturday morning cartoons like Dragon’s Lair, Robotech, Transformers, and so on. At that age your brain is like a sponge, so I just soaked it all up.

CV: How did your enjoyment of these types of entertainment develop as you became a teenager and an adult?

GL: Eventually comic books could only sustain my interest if they were particularly well-told stories or if the artwork was exceptional, like the Sandman graphic novel series by Neil Gaiman. And Cages by Dave McKean is still one of my favorites. Lately I’ve been meaning to catch up on all of [V for Vendetta writer] Alan Moore’s work.

CV: At what point did you think you wanted to become an artist?

GL: When I was a kid I would hoard comic books, pore over them for hours, and meticulously recreate the artwork. Growing up, I was sure I would become a comic artist; “concept artist” was not exactly the buzzword it is nowadays.

But even though I didn’t know at that time that concept art existed, I was actually already conceptualizing back then. My dad cleared out some old boxes from his house a couple years back and asked me to come take some of my old notebooks and sketchpads. I was amazed to find them absolutely filled with original character designs: a superhero, anti-hero, villain, or weird character on every page. It was clearly a huge compulsion I had as a kid.

After college, though, I tried for a while to work toward a more “safe” profession. I was enrolled in a prestigious law school and had a bright career path ahead of me, but I hated every second of it. I finally accepted that I am an artist and I dropped out. I’ve sacrificed lot to be able to start a career as an artist; it’s been a long, convoluted, and painful path to get to a place where I could accept who I am and what I should be doing with myself.

CV: What environs, things, or people inspire you?

GL: Off the top of my head, I could probably name a hundred influential artists, media developers, or filmmakers whose work I love. So let’s just say that I consume a lot of art, design, and illustration, and will spend a good part of my day just enjoying art for its own sake.

I get inspired by anything and everything and never know when inspiration may strike. You just have to go about your life and bam, suddenly you see something, or talk to someone, or hear a sound that just takes hold in your mind. Sometimes the littlest thing snowballs into a huge elaborate world in your imagination.

You have to keep designing fresh stuff in this line of work, so it’s necessary to draw upon diverse sources of inspiration and to try to actually have a life—see a lot of things and go to a lot of places. If you are getting your inspiration only from the game art that is already out there, you will just end up with a stale, already-been-done design.

I try to keep a sketch book with me whenever I can. If I’m on the subway and someone has cool boots on, I will sketch them; if I see a cool building somewhere, I will sketch it. When I do this consistently, I later have a wealth of work to spark the creative process with.

CV: Why do you think stories about otherworldly creatures have become so popular?

GL: You know, I went to the theater the other night, and maybe 2 of the 8 movies playing were set in the normal world and told stories about normal people. The rest all had a supernatural twist of some sort—superheroes, vampires, aliens, and so on. It seems like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror—genres that have traditionally been on the fringe—are the norm nowadays.

On an abstract level, these types of stories are modern mythologies that teach us about courage and sacrifice, which is often compelling. On a more practical level, it’s entertainment, which most often takes the form of escapism. People want to go to another world and maybe step into the persona of a powerful hero for a while.

This is why J.R.R. Tolkien, for example, is so popular. It’s easy for people to enter the Lord of the Rings fantasy because it’s so well fleshed out—he not only fully created all the languages his characters speak, but even wrote songs in those languages.

CV: Some sci-fi and fantasy fans are somewhat proud of the “nerd” label that’s been given them, although they’re now less likely to be seen that way as those genres continue to increase their mainstream presence. What’s your biggest “nerd moment”?

GL: Every day I seem to outdo myself. The other day I drew a half-boy, half-alligator creature with Elvis shades on a lawn chair, sipping iced tea. That’s the kind of thing I do for fun.