Jack Brait
Jack Brait started puzzling when as a toddler when he was diagnosed with autism. It was easy for him to see how the pieces go. He later started doing jigsaw puzzles that are anything under 100 pieces, including floor puzzles.
Throughout elementary school, Jack started to do 500 and 1,000 piece puzzles. When he was in 4th and 5th Grade, he connected them and give each puzzle to his teachers as gifts. After starting middle school, Jack did more 1,000 piece puzzles gifting each to friends and family. They all loved their puzzle.
As his high school days began in 2011, Jack discovered a 32,000 piece Keith Haring puzzle online by a puzzle company in Germany called Ravensburger. It was the world's largest puzzle at the time. He got it for Christmas. That following August, Jack started the puzzle. It took him 20 months to complete. When it was finished in April 2014, it was big and gigantic! Jack showed all of his family members and friends the puzzle and they couldn't believe their eyes just as his senior year in high school approached. Jack was on Chronicle, a TV series in New England about the 32,000 piece puzzle. In 2015, Jack won a Shining Star Award from the Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism for completing the puzzle.
In 2016, Jack discovered a giant Disney puzzle containing 40,320 pieces. It was also made by Ravensburger. He was thinking he wonder there would ever be a giant Disney jigsaw puzzle to exist. Because Jack is a huge Disney fan and if there is one, he will complete it right away. He eventually got it for that Christmas. He completed each section, which are Disney's Memorable Moments of each of the 10 Disney animated classics including Snow White, Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. It was finished in 2017. Jack was on the news again for the gigantic Disney puzzle. NBC10 Boston and The Boston Globe asked him questions about the puzzle. It was a Guinness World Record at the time for Ravensburger. My friends and family still got to see it. In 2020 when Jack moved to another home, the 40,320 piece Disney's Memorable Moments puzzle got displayed in his elementary school, so teachers there can see it and make them remember him. They remembered that Jack loved Disney when he was a student there.
After this puzzle, he completed a 52,110 piece puzzle depicting zoo animals in 2019. When it was done, it got displayed at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. When public visitors saw it, they were impressed and couldn't believe this.
Puzzling was the most popular thing for people during the COVID-19 Pandemic. After receiving a gift from Ravensburger North America when winning its world puzzle competition at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire where Jack skis in the winter, the gift was another 40,320 piece Disney puzzle. This time, it depicts Mickey Mouse's 90 year memorabilia tribute. Overtime, he completed all the rest of the world's largest puzzles until the pandemic ended. It was a lot of work. Each of the puzzles contained different pieces per set. One had 24,000 pieces, another 32,000 pieces, 33,600 pieces, 42,000 pieces, 48,000 pieces, 51,300 pieces, 54,000 pieces, and 60,000 pieces! Jack uses a special method to complete each puzzle faster. He sorts each section per bag to help him what parts of the picture is the easiest to the hardest for himself. While completing each of the rest of the world's largest puzzles, Jack displays each puzzle at public places all over New England---except only a couple that didn't get displayed publicly.
In 2022 and 2023, after completing the last world's largest puzzle, Jack started to create and buy 1,000 piece puzzles online. The picture he choses is families he knows. He gave each family portrait puzzle to families he knows, mainly to the couple whose kids are older, to help cope with missing their kids everyday. It's their best gift ever. Jack is proud of himself that he has completed all of the world's largest jigsaw puzzles. It was definitely a lot of work for only one individual. Everyone in Jack’s life past to present are still amazed with them. By the time he finished the last world's largest puzzle, he was the very first and only person in the world to date to ever complete all of the world's largest puzzles because he researched all over the internet if anyone else in the globe has ever completed them all. If there is a new one made in the future, Jack will complete it no matter what.
Not relating to the world’s largest puzzles, The toughest puzzle Jack ever completed was the micro pure white puzzle and black puzzle from a Japanese company called “Beverly” because the pieces are all the same color and shape. The challzgding kind of puzzles Jack has done was Photomosaics which are millions of tiny pictures all in one whole picture and pieces are extremely detailed.
For movies, Jack started to have the love of the movies when he was a kid. After watching Disney animated movies, he was interested in watching live-action movies that featured particular actors who voiced a Disney animated character. Throughout the years, Jack watched a lot of fun live-action movies that featured each said actor, especially in sequels films.
In 2013, Jack began having the love of the Oscars. Argo was his first movie seen in a movie theatre to later win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Over the years, he watched every single movie that has won an Oscar, including the short films. It was an impossible fun thing to do. 2024 was a year that changed Jack’s life. For the Oscars about the movies for that year, he watched every single Academy Award-Nominated film that has been nominated before the Oscars ceremony. It was impressive, but a ton of work. After watching almost all of the Oscar-winning movies, and the movies from the book series "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", Jack has this unique knowledge of cinema, which he can tell people his trick that is telling the facts about each movie from any year between 1927 and today! It is hard to imagine that he knows facts about so many movies.
Jack loves to watch Turner Classic Movies, a channel that shows old classic movies from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and 1980s. Even some of the 1990s and the 2000s! He first experienced Turner Classic Movies in 2006 at the age of 9. It made him curious about movies that are older as The Wizard Of Oz. Jack used to watch The Wizard of Oz when he was tiny before 2006. Today, Jack still loves enjoying the network so much as a big-time movie enthusiast. He’s even a friend of TCM! Part of his own movie-loving experience is meeting actors, filmmakers, and people involved in greatest films. When Jack shows an actor or a filmmaker his unique knowledge of cinema, they were amazed and mind-blown because they were impressed.
For Animation, Jack loves animation because it's a different, unique way of art. He didn't go to school for animation, he self-taught hand-drawn animation. Jack started doing animation in the mid-2010s when he heard Disney isn't doing much hand-drawn animated projects anymore. 2D hand-drawn animation is different than 3D CGI animation because it is more colorful and feels different to make people in this unique kind of artistic way, using Jack’s own imagination.
Throughout the rest of the 2010s, Jack decided to make people he knows into cartoons. He made his own animated short film featuring his high school friends, which took five years to complete. It was a lot of work. Jack makes friends into cartoons as surprises. He even self-taught videos that mixed live-action and animation, which means videos that mix live real people and cartoons. That was so much complicated work! The video recording, the animation, the backgrounds, the coloring, compositing... everything! He made one of these for his two sisters and his parents for each of their birthdays. Each video shows their friends as cartoons voiced by themselves saying their happy birthday wishes to them. When Jack surprised his sisters and parents, it was their best present ever.
Jack also self-taught an easier way to turn live-action to animation. On an iPad, using an app called Procreate Dreams, he uses a video layer of a live video he took of a family member or friend, then puts another layer above it to draw every single frame. He had to make sure the eyes and the mouth look more "toony". After finishing each frame, Jack uses an ink and paint software called Toon Boom Harmony. It was used for many modern 2D animated projects for Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, and many more. For compositing and rendering, Jack uses Adobe After Effects to make sure the camera for any animation piece is correct in his own way. Then the animation piece is all finished.
Jack’s greatest parts of his autism are he has an amazing memory, which is one reason why he has a unique knowledge of film and complete a puzzle in record time. Jack would love to show more actors, filmmakers, and other famous people my unique talents in his future dreams. Everyone is amazed with Jack’s puzzles and his movie knowledge. Jack would also like to work for movie-related stuff for computers or talking to famous people telling him about their stories. Everybody is different.
Everyone has different talents. Puzzles, animation, and a unique knowledge of film are three of Jack’s unique own.
“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
— Walt Disney