This week Her Campus takes a moment to recognize SFA’s own Rodney Keith Thomas Jr. as Campus Celebrity. Rodney is a very talented artist who is attending Stephen F. Austin and is also involved in a plethora of extracurricular activities and is a man of many jobs. As Her Campus SFA gets a chance to sit down with this week’s celebrity, you’ll learn more about Rodney and his talents and also how to catch him around campus!
1. Tell us a little about yourself – where are you from, what do you classify as, what is your major, and why did you decide to study at SFA?
I’m from Houston originally; I’ve lived a lot of places, but I’ve lived in Houston the most. I’m a sophomore majoring in Art Education, because I would like to be an Art professor and be famous. A lot of my family has went to SFA, so I’ve been around here a few times growing up. I’ve always said SFA when people would ask me what college I was going to go to since 6th grade, and strangely enough I wound up here.
2. Are you involved in any organizations on campus? Off campus?
I draw the comics for the Pine Log and this is my second semester doing so. I’ve also been in the art club – nerdy, I know – for two years now. I’ve been a part of the fraternity Kappa Sigma for two years, since my freshmen year. I recently started working for the Daily Sentinel in December drawing political cartoons. I also have worked for Dolphin’s since December, which is a t-shirt screen printing business. Also, I am a shift manager at Quizno’s for two years now. And I play flag football, basketball, baseball, and soccer – pretty much everything for intramural sports at SFA.
3. When did you start drawing and why?
I started probably when I was 4 or 5 because I really liked coloring books. As much as I liked them, it still didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t buy my own coloring books; so I started to draw my own pictures. The first cartoon I ever drew was Mickey Mouse. I remember I would use a quarter for his head and his ears.
4. What makes your drawings unique and different from other artists?
I think it’s more so that I grab the little awkward moments during my day and try to make them funny through my art. I go about my day and I look for anything to draw. Its real life instances that people don’t really think are funny, so I try to make them funny. I love seeing people’s reactions. If I can’t find anything funny, I’ll think about it later and say, “Man, that was hilarious!” Then it’s a lot easier to put it on paper than to explain it to people in words.
5. Tell us about your experience with the Pine Log.
I guess you could say I didn’t like the comic strip that they had before I started doing it. They seemed bland and not really funny at all – they didn’t even relate to college students, not even a little bit. It was more so related to things around town. And I know that’s important, but I didn’t really care about what was happening in the town. You have the town’s newspaper to cover that. I figured, since I’m involved on campus a lot, I felt like I had a better insight on what was going on around campus and I felt like I could make it easier for people to relate to. People even come up to me and tell me that they can relate to the things I draw. So I just went into the Pine Log one day and asked if I could start doing the comic strip and it was a done deal.
6. Do you have any prospective plans for after graduation? (For example, a dream-job?)
My dream job would definitely be to work for Pixar. But I don’t see it as a dream, but as a goal. I know I will eventually get there. Or I would like to start my own company specifically for artists, illustrators, painters, and cartoonists so they won’t worry where their next paycheck is coming from. Like, if some other company needed a cartoonist, they would come to my company and pick one of the artists that I have working for me. I want to do this because it takes a lot of time to build up your popularity, and the downfall of being an artist is hit or miss. You either find something you’re going to make money in, or you end up being the stereotypical starving artist that does it just for passion. Of course you love it, but you know you want to make money off it. It’s like a quote I once heard: “A good artist isn’t judged by how well his paintings are, but by how easily he can sell them”. I guess you could say I live by this saying because it motivates me to keep pushing forward. Like I said, I know I’ll get there eventually.