The Blog of Travis Brainerd

2011-12-05T00:07:00.004-06:00

Tyler is well-stocked. Check out his photoblog.

Flannel

2011-05-31T00:49:00.002-05:00

It's a flannel shirt!

Calendars album cover

2011-03-29T23:41:00.003-05:00

My brother recorded an album and I helped out with the album cover! Check it out here. (Free download, just scroll down to the mp3 link.)

Spring 2011 Animation Reel

2011-03-05T22:32:00.000-06:00

Brand new animation reel! Featuring some new Flash work, including some character library design!

T-rex

2011-03-04T02:34:00.000-06:00

Part of the same project... here's a T-rex!

The Professor

2011-02-28T01:07:00.001-06:00

New character design... time for adventure!

Taking on Number 50

2010-11-28T00:03:00.000-06:00

Animated card for my Dad's 50th birthday.

Codename Vigor

2010-10-16T01:47:00.000-05:00

Flash version of the lead char from this project.

Martini planet concept

2010-10-06T01:12:00.001-05:00

Where many men have gone before...

Spaceman concept

2010-09-30T02:31:00.000-05:00

Character concept I'm toying with.

Explore Chattanooga Website

2010-08-31T00:10:00.000-05:00

Quite an innovative, fun website by Fashionbuddha Studio. It features key landmarks of the "world" of Chattanooga, Tennessee. I got to animate a few of the individual scenes, including: baseball stadium, ferry, hotel & bus, and train.

August 2010 Animation Reel

2010-08-12T01:13:00.000-05:00

I've been working on my website but I have a new reel to share too!

Website Launch

2010-07-29T12:38:00.001-05:00

1.0 launch. Enjoy the site!

Stop Motion Reel

2010-06-25T16:58:00.000-05:00

New reel this month, updated with recent projects.

HP / Shrek Video Project

2010-06-15T22:57:00.000-05:00

Shrek and HP "Bring Green to Life" in this animated video I did the stop motion work on. Curiosity Group produced the video as well as cool printables that can be found here.

PHLUSH PSA

2010-04-23T23:31:00.000-05:00

Check out Fashionbuddha's newest stop motion piece. I helped animate and construct the sets. I love how this turned out!

SO SO Happy Episode 2

2010-04-16T15:52:00.000-05:00

SO SO Happy seems to be cranking along, they're on their second episode already. More pancakes in this one, I promise.

SO SO Happy

2010-03-25T18:53:00.000-05:00

Check out SO SO Happy. I animated the pancakes on this cool video.

PHLUSH Title Sequence

2010-02-22T02:23:00.000-06:00

Preview: PHLUSH project for Fashionbuddha.

Geeking out

2010-01-31T16:51:00.000-06:00

Exploratory animation keys for Geek Hero. Very rough at this stage, so suggestions are welcome.

Be Mine: Pre-production

2010-01-22T01:31:00.001-06:00

Here are a couple concept pieces and storyboard pages I did for the student production Be Mine.

If you're not one you need one

2010-01-17T01:52:00.000-06:00

First concepts for a character lineup.

New demo reel

2010-01-07T17:51:00.000-06:00

Hey guys, my video for Curiosity Group was featured on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog. Woohoo!

Curiosity!

2010-01-06T14:01:00.002-06:00

I spent a few months working on this stop motion. Make sure you check out the printable papercrafts (hooray!) on the official website.

It's now listed on IMDb here. Make sure you log in and vote on it!

Coffee for pirates

2009-12-31T00:47:00.000-06:00

Bought a mug today that looks like

Simple but cool!

Late nite experimenty photoshop

2009-12-30T04:40:00.001-06:00

Be Mine

2009-12-12T23:16:00.000-06:00

I was only one part of a larger team in the pre-production for this student film, so I can't pinpoint one particular element from the finished product to claim as my own. But, I think that everyone did a good job and it's worth sharing. ~~I may have to add some of my concept work in a later post.~~ See my concept work here.

You can download the full 345 MB video file by right-clicking here, or you can also view it on the YouTube page.

I recommend looking at Ryan Liebe's beautiful character concepts, and if interested, much of the original concept and works-in-progress can still be viewed on our wiki, though it takes some navigating.

Creepy house on a hill background

2009-12-09T01:20:00.000-06:00

Based on the Aunts' house from James and the Giant Peach, and trying to go for a Mary Grandpré style.

Creepy hands!!!

2009-12-08T00:40:00.000-06:00

Dolls for a friend's web project; and in color

Brain + Nerd

2009-11-15T21:11:00.000-06:00

New banner and business card design. Not sure about the card though...

School Newsletter Comic, Vol. 2!

2009-09-15T04:40:00.000-05:00

The Life of a Starving Artist (In Training). Enjoy!

School Newsletter Comic: The Making Of

2009-08-09T18:37:00.000-05:00

I posted the comic I made for the AI school newsletter a few weeks ago. This is a little 'behind-the-scenes' post showing the steps of my comic-creating process.

Once I knew what my story was going to be, I thumbnailed out my pages a couple times with rough ideas of what the characters looked like, then worked out tighter character models.

I roughed out basic forms in blue pencil (after making some location reference sketches) and put in some tightened pencils. This is the fun part for me.

After scanning in my roughs, I dropped the blue pencils in Photoshop. Then I took the remaining pencils, and printed them out in light blue. This is the inking stage, although I decided to "ink" with a pencil.

Now the Photoshop work begins... but the creative work isn't over! This is an ink layer after blue color removal, followed by rough working colors in CMYK mode.

I used the shape tool for dialogue balloons and turned on shadow effects to give them a solid outline. 'Tekton Pro' is the font I used, one that has a somewhat-hand-drawn feel to it (not quite as good as the real thing though).

Lessons in Evil

2009-07-11T19:11:00.000-05:00

Full color version of my new banner.

Sketchbook entry

2009-07-04T02:41:00.000-05:00

Sketching from reference

Film storyboards

2009-06-17T23:30:00.001-05:00

Storyboards for a live action project entitled 'The Prodigal Sum.'

Spring 2009 Animation Reel

2009-06-10T21:43:00.000-05:00

This is my working demo reel highlighting my 2D and stop motion animation.

School Newsletter Comic: 'Warm Welcome'

2009-06-08T22:44:00.000-05:00

In print this July!

Tangled Web rough animation

2009-04-13T16:37:00.000-05:00

These are my animations from the 2-D production 'Tangled Web.' The project is in cleanup and coming soon to a festival near you!

Figure sketches

2009-03-06T23:50:00.001-06:00

A few new ones from the past couple of weeks.

Comic page

2009-02-21T23:57:00.000-06:00

Second page for the comics club project.

Two new clothed figure drawings

2009-02-03T00:59:00.000-06:00

Time to get back into practice!

Nothing to do

2009-02-01T00:17:00.000-06:00

Nothing to do but draw comics! One of my four pages for the school 'Doors' project.

Storyboards

2008-12-19T17:13:00.000-06:00

Been needing to post some storyboarding samples. These are for a fellow student's film.

Meet the deputy

2008-11-20T20:09:00.000-06:00

This is a concept piece for the comic story I'm working on. More to come.

Figure drawing

2008-11-14T18:47:00.001-06:00

From the past couple of weeks at Ai.

Incal homage comic

2008-10-31T17:48:00.000-05:00

Homage to The Incal, art by the great Moebius. This was for my comics class last term, but just got around to inking it.

I learned a few things while doing this.
1. Simplify the story. Don't cram too much onto a page.

2. I'm not going to be a comic illustrator. Especially not an inker.

3. It's hard to tell when the rat parrot (they exist in the future) is talking. When he is talking in a lot of the long shots, it looks like John talking.

Chinese rank badge

2008-10-22T23:05:00.001-05:00

Chinese rank badge project for Chinese/Japanese Cultural History class. Kind of classical imagery with a modern art twist.

Figure drawing at PNCA

2008-10-10T15:40:00.000-05:00

This week's figure drawing sketches.

Rough character design

2008-10-10T15:32:00.000-05:00

Spaghetti western horror story concept, needs lots of pretty women designed!

Inks

2008-09-17T02:08:00.000-05:00

Here are the inked and (digitally) lettered pages. Might go back to fix a few things and color these.

Comics final project pencils

2008-09-11T01:08:00.000-05:00

Pencils for the final project in my comics class.