some book trailer talkin'

I was trying to think of something to write about today when I realized that I just slapped up the new trailer yesterday without really saying anything about it. So today, I’m doing some book trailer talk.

Creating the trailer for Lair of the White Wyrm was much easier than the Fate Binds trailer. You might remember that one had some blooming flower animation…or you might remember not depending on whether you read the blog then.

The animation for the Lair trailer consists of some moving words and also panning around a grove, which is a scene from the book. The grove picture is a composite image created from two digital photos I took at a public park during a day last summer. There used to be a skate park in the background of one of them.

Bouncing back and forth between Photoshop and Fireworks, I extracted the trees and some of the grass, nixed the skate park and other background stuff, and darkened the whole deal to night time. Then, I created a radial glow in the background. Oh, some of the trees are drawn in, mostly the ones in the back.

Also fun was the brush I found (in Photoshop?) that had a leaf-shaped tip. Awesome, right? I used that in various colors to get all the trees to blend together and also add some contrast to the image.

That’s a lot of work to end up not using the graphic. I was really glad that the trailer allowed me to do something with it.

Animating the pan around the grove was a piece of cake. In Flash, you can set a couple of locations and create a tween. I had to mess with the timing a little but overall, it was WAY easier than the blooming flowers, plus you get a peek at some scenery from the book.

The other major graphic in the trailer is the head of the wyrm. If you guessed that it is a skinned over version of the skull on the book cover, you are correct and I have awarded you an extra 5 bonus points for your attention to detail.

Skinning over the skull actually took longer than I thought it would. I figured it would be an hour, tops. I mean the shape is already there. It was probably double that by the end of it.

I’m embedding the video again so you don’t have to scroll down to yesterday’s post.