Ryan Kovar's FLCC toolbox

Ryan Kovar, a graphic design graduate, found success illustrating children's books. His unique style led to the release of "Wildly Perfect" in 2021.

As the pandemic shutdowns began in 2020, an opportunity for Ryan Kovar ’12 opened up.

Ryan, a graphic design graduate of FLCC, got a message from a children’s book author who had seen his work on hireanillustrator.com.

A year later, “Wildly Perfect” hit the market, featuring his playful, quirky images to accompany verse encouraging individuality and self-confidence.

Ryan Kovar ’12 illustrated the 2021 children’s book “Wildly Perfect.”

Ryan, who has another children’s book in the works, talked about his journey as an animator and illustrator at his Williams-Insalaco Gallery 34 art gallery exhibit at the main campus. Ryan honed his own individuality and self-confidence at FLCC before he transferred to Rochester Institute of Technology to study  film and animation.

“It was a great transitional period,” he said of his associate degree work. “I learned so many different programs and design principles that it provided me a toolbox to be able to pull from when I was doing projects at RIT.”

New ways to create

Ryan chose FLCC after graduating from Canandaigua Academy in the wake of the Great Recession.

“It wasn’t really financially in the cards for me to go immediately to a four-year college,” he explained, adding, “I had been diagnosed with learning disabilities while I was in high school. I had overcome a lot, but I didn’t feel confident that I could adjust to this new kind of mindset, new environment.”

Ryan found his FLCC classes challenging, in part because he had to learn how to move from drawing on paper to using digital tools. He credits faculty for their guidance as they introduced him to the different facets of graphic design in a manageable way.

As an individual with autism, Ryan used art to express the thoughts and feelings he had trouble sharing verbally. Elaine Verstraete helped him sharpen his illustration style, which embraces the unusual and absurd.

“Elaine encouraged me to be myself artistically,” he said. “She gave me the opportunity to learn so much more about illustration and the illustration process. A lot of what she taught I still remember to this day. She was a big influence.”

John Fox showed him how to make an animation sequence. “It was really cool that he gave me and others a chance to get a taste for that before moving on to RIT, where I studied it full time. It definitely reinforced that I do enjoy this and I can do this, and I’ll get better in the future.” 

Ryan took sculpture with Barron Naegel, who organized his recent gallery show, and graphic design with Liz Brownell. “She helped me a lot with understanding the concept of design and transitioning from traditional to digital,” he said. 

“I had never tackled working in programs like PhotoShop before, and it was a struggle to learn it,” he added. “It’s hard for anybody to change or try something new, but it’s especially hard for someone on the spectrum to break the routine. Almost everything I originally struggled with at FLCC is a tool that I can easily use nowadays. I think I wouldn’t have done quite as well at RIT if I didn’t have that early experience.”

Finishing his general education classes at FLCC also helped him focus at RIT on his film and animation courses. While there, he was able to direct three animated short films. His senior project, “Hunt or Be Hunted” has been featured at short film festivals.

The next book

Since graduating from RIT in 2016, he has created a range of art as a freelancer, from magazines and print advertising to short films and a cartoon series. Ryan often gives animals a comical aspect with unusual colors and human expressions, and he draws outlandish creatures with odd mixes of tentacles, eyes, fins and feathers. 

“I specialize in creating fun, whimsical illustrations of cartoon characters, animals and fantastical other-worldly creatures, who can express a wide range of emotion through clear expressions and strong poses,” he said. “Making the unusual relatable is what drives me to create.” 

“Wildly Perfect,” with text by Brooke McMahan, is available on Amazon where reviewers praise the message as well as the illustrations, which one reader called “captivating and clever.” Last year, another children’s author reached out to Ryan. He wrapped about 50 illustrations for “Wake the Wolf” by Maurizio Lippiello over the summer and is waiting to hear on a publication date. He is also working on text and illustrations for his own children’s book.

See more of Ryan’s work at ryankovar.com and on Instagram: @kovarcreations.