The Art of Jon Ponikvar

For my Backgrounds, Props and Structures class. This assignment had a very basic script: a man walks up to a car, gets inside, starts the engine, and drives off. The focus was on drawing the interior and exterior of the car, so that’s where most of my efforts went with the rendering. I think I may have gotten a bit carried away with it, as it extended the production time of the comic a bit, but seeing as how this is my first real attempt at drawing a realistic car, I’m pretty happy with the results.

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This was an assignment for my Drawing for Storyboards class. I had to create a 30-second commercial spot in finished color storyboards for a real-life product. I decided to go with Red Bull and put a bit of a spin on their ad campaign. I did a good amount of research to get down the art style of the actual commercials; it can be tough sometimes to believably emulate another style, but I think I actually managed it pretty well this time.

Thanks goes to my girl Whitney for the original idea when we were brainstorming.

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Next up for Backgrounds, Props & Structures, was an assignment centered around Ft. Pulaski, a historical confederate landmark a few miles outside of Savannah. The story goes that when an elderly tourist couple visits the fort, one of them sees something in the water, which immediately grabs them and pulls them into the drink. It was up to me to decide what it is exactly that pulls them in, and the story that follows after.

I went a little crazy with the rendering on this one. Total time: about 9 hours or so.

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For this assignment, we HAD to use direct photo reference of River Street in Savannah. The “story” consisted of a young couple on a cold, rainy day in River Street. As they walk along, one of them notices something in a store, and quickly drags the other one inside. The rest of the details were up to us.

Total time: about 7 hours. Finished in blue Col-erase pencil.

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My “Drawing for Storyboards” class is divided into individual portfolios, with each one including several small assignments. This is the first one, wherein I had to produce three finished renderings (in Photoshop grayscale) of conceptual environments, focusing on one-, two-, and three-point perspective. Here are my finished images for the project.

One-point:

Two-point:

Three-point:

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Project three for Backgrounds, Props and Structures required an illustration of a busy city street. The actual street had to be based on one from real life, although we were allowed to make cosmetic changes as necessary. The only other requirement was that in addition to cars — both driving and parked — we had to include a boy scout helping an old lady across the street, a “Paris Hilton” style girl, and a group of fully-dressed business men. I went a little crazy with mine and decided to make it a bit more chaotic.

An interesting thing to note: this photo is of Broughton Street in Savannah, facing East. This means the parachuter in the background is basically jumping out of his plane directly over the Atlantic Ocean. Sucks to be him!

Finished in Col-Erase blue pencils. Total work time: about 7 hours.

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Assignment two for Backgrounds, Props and Structures consisted of the professor handing out a random job to each student from a list he had put together before class. The student then had to draw either a home or place of business for that occupation entirely from our imaginations (no reference photos were necessary). The professions ranged from firefighter to shark wrangler, so you can imagine how crazy some of the assignments came out.

My assigned profession was Movie Star. I decided to go with the idea that a particular actor would swipe movie sets as souvenirs and incorporate them into his house. See if you can figure out which actor I had in mind when I drew this one.

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Completed in Col-Erase blue pencil. Total work time: about 5 hours.

Well hey, it’s my first finished assignment as a new graduate student at SCAD!

This was done for my Backgrounds, Props and Structures class. To those who remember, I actually attempted to take this class a few years ago as an undergrad, but had to drop it around midterms when I ended up in the hospital. Now that I’m coming back as a graduate student, SCAD is requiring that I complete it before I can start on my graduate studio classes. It makes me wonder if they even bothered to look at my portfolio if they think I need a class in backgrounds, but I digress.

This is one of the many gorgeous houses around Savannah. I went for a tilted angle for a more dynamic composition, and also so I could have an excuse to do three-point perspective (which is a guilty pleasure of mine).

Done entirely with a blue Col-Erase pencil. Total work time: roughly 7 hours.

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Here’s a bit of a sneak preview on a character who will soon be making her debut in the pages of Peter & Company: Whitney, a gray-furred cat, the same age as Peter.

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I won’t give away plot details just yet as to who she is or what role she will play, but I will give one hint: although she is new to the readers, she will be someone whom Peter has known for a long time already. Readers can expect to see her debut in the comic before the end of this year.

My girl Whitney and I have these occasional “Webcam Art Jams” where we choose a topic and start doodling, showing each others’ progress as we go along. This one was an idea she had where she googled a photo of a random animal and we had to both draw our own version of the image.

The reference photo (which I included in this pic, as well as the source URL of the image) is that of a baby anteater. Whitney’s version of the image was a bit more cartoony (and VERY cute I might add… I still wish she would post it on here as I thought it was really good), while I decided to just draw it straight from the image. The end result is very fuzzy. But I guess that’s because baby anteaters are fuzzy. I dunno.

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