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.

lots of stuff

Hello! How are we this wonderful evening? This past weekend was very cold. I took this picture of the field behind the house to give you an idea of the fantastic dreariness. Have you even seen a place so white and desolate? This was taken at about 5pm on Sunday.

The good news is, things outside are warming up.

Earlier today I read about reactions to the Academy Award Nominations from various stars. There was a variety of reactions ranging from gratitude to, well, not as much gratitude. I wondered, how much does one’s reaction quote say about their personality? So I compiled this quick guide about what people might think when they read what you said about being nominated for the biggest award in the industry.

Gratitude personified : These are my favorites. They thank specific people by name, regardless of whether they are less famous. I would guess that these are the people who work hard and appreciate the hard work of others or at least realize that they should appreciate the hard work of the people they work with. These people win first prize for class.

Witty: Some stars said funny, witty things. Very nice. Not quite as gracious as the above but a willingness to put thought into what is said shows a certain level of intelligence and friendliness.

Academy Awards? What the heck are those?: Sigh. They try so hard to look cool. They don’t thank anyone. They don’t seem to even appreciate the fact that they were acknowledged. I would guess that these people might not be a joy to work for or with. I picture them in my head as spoiled, rich children who never had to really work for anything.

End Academy Awards talk

Guess what other excitement is here today. Go on. Guess. No, don’t look at the embedded video below. That’s cheating.

Ok, it’s a new book trailer! This one is the prerelease trailer for Lair of the White Wyrm, which is due out 2/21/12.




There will be a second version after the book is released with availability, etc.

Also sort of up is the book page.

Some of the links aren’t active yet, of course, because they don’t exist, but you can get a feel for what the finished page is going to look like. Plus there’s a synopsis. That might not be the final version.

Book Page

a couple of things

First, the title voting results were unanimously in favor of the second title option for the wyrm book. Therefore, the title will be Lair of the White Wyrm.

Second up, I finally finished a project I've been planning for a while. The Fate Binds trilogy now has its very own online home. You can find pretty much everything AnnaBeth there. I've been calling it a media page. There's probably a better word for it.

I will probably do one for every book or series from here on out unless my schedule doesn't allow or a publisher picks me up and decides they want someone else to handle it.

Implementation took a lot of hours Saturday and Sunday. I got to use my new to me version of Dreamweaver, which went pretty smoothly. It works a lot like the old Dreamweaver from Macromedia I used before.

Anyway, the link is below. As always, feedback is welcome. I probably didn’t edit some of the content as well as I should have, so if you alert me to any typos, I shall bestow upon you 20 extra bonus points for awesomeness.

http://learyan.com/Documents/fatebindsHome.html

trailer time

Ello, lovelies! Trailer time.

The trailer is not yet listed. I have to wait until the book pops up on Barnes and Noble because the trailer indicates that the book is available there. I also have to wait to launch the series webpage because I don’t really want to have to go back and update the page right after I put it up. That would be annoying.

I did change the thumbnail image to one closer to the beginning of the trailer, but that change might not have taken effect when/if you view it.

Also, I realize the picture ratio is a little off from the standard youtube size. I’ll do a better job of fitting the next one.

movie: Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids is a comedy that proves women can do humor just as raunchy as men can. That’s what makes it awesome.

Kristen Wiig is Annie, a failed baker who works as a rather ineffective jewelry saleswoman. She’s broke and dating a jerk. Her best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), gets engaged and makes Annie her maid of honor. At the engagement party, Annie and another bridesmaid initiate this weird competition for Lillian’s attention that interferes with wedding plans.

Wiig and Rudolph (SNL alums) were quite awesome, but Melissa McCarthy (of Mike and Molly) as Megan all but stole their show. I don’t think her character could have been any stranger or farther from the one she plays on television. That girl can act.

Bridesmaids is very funny and a little chick-flicky but not annoyingly so. It gets an A-.

I’m going to go see if I can hunt down some pretzels. Tune in tomorrow for a blog only (temporarily) sneak peak at the Fate Binds Trilogy Trailer. That’s right. I finished it.

procrastination plus book trailer update

Today I was reading through the remix project and I discovered that somehow like 200 words or so had vanished from the manuscript. It’s weird because I have no idea how or why they disappeared. Luckily I still had a hard copy printout of the previous version, so all I had to do was find the corresponding page and type the missing part back in. I’m just glad that I hadn’t taken the pages to the recycle bin yet. Yay procrastination!

Ok. Guess what. No…not chicken butt. Book trailer update! I have completed the flower animation. I have also resolved the problem of the crap-ass picture quality.

Flash animation does not convert to avi format well, which is why the video looked blurry or grainy or whatever the first time I put it up on the blog. The problem was even worse when I converted the completed animation to avi. It was so bad that when I tried to play it on full screen, the flowers looked like straight up 8-bit graphics. After working so long on the thing, the bad picture made me want to cry.

But I did not cry. I looked for and eventually found a solution. The conversion from Flash to Quicktime (mov) went much smoother.

I haven’t made the final adjustments to the timing of the flowers yet. The roses will start before the rest of the foliage, with the exception of the grass blades. There will also be words in the middle, of course. The flowers, etc are just the border.

flower!

What up? I'm still sick, but am feeling better. Last night I was only woken up by one over the top coughing fit. progress! woo! I'm trying to get over this thing before I have to resort to antibiotics.

So what have I been doing? Ya know, usual stuff, probably less of it. The book trailer is cruising along. I'm dividing my time between that and tweeking the remix project.

My animated stems now have acceptable leaves. Last night I worked on the rose blossoms. I had some trouble figuring out how I wanted them to look. I didn't want photo realistic because nothing else in the animation is. I did a couple of sketches. They were too abstract.

I ended up using a photo from a recent shoot of roses. I found the one I liked best, plugged it into PhotoShop, cropped and applied a filter that converts photo to drawing. Then I took it over to Fireworks and made a few adjustments by hand, added lines and such. This is what I ended up with at the end of the evening.




This is, of course, much larger than it will appear in the actual trailer. Also the background won't be black. The flower looks sort of Warhol-esque, I think. When it goes into the animation, there will be various adjustments made. Not all the rose blooms will be exactly the same size, shape and color.

I will probably show what I have on the trailer again within the next week or two after I finish the blooming sequences. The video took like a freaking hour to upload to YouTube last time. I want to make sure there's significant progress before I go to that trouble again.

drum roll please

ok, it's not really worth a drum roll. Here is what I have so far on the trailer. It looks kind of blurry and weird at the moment. I'm not sure why. It looks fine on my computer. There might be some issue with compression. I will try to see if I can get that resolved before I get the whole thing up and running for real.





It has taken several attempts for me to get this far. The rose vine is not the original vine I previously talked about completing. The good news is that I have my methods down, so I'm moving much faster than before.

I'm still not entirely happy with the drawing tools available inside Flash. They're awkward and there isn't enough control for me to make things the way I really want them. I draw up what I want in Fireworks and then take it over to Flash. It works, somewhat.

There will be a lot more to the trailer than growing vines and blooming flowers. I just wanted to start with the most difficult part to get it out of the way.

book update plus trailer working

Hello, world. The birthday weekend was pretty awesome, despite the husband working most of it. The festivities will continue this weekend when I visit the fam. Perhaps next week I'll do a complete birthday breakdown.

I worked my ass off. It was truly amazing. I transferred almost 50 pages of paper editing changes into the computer for the remix project. That's on schedule to go up on the writing feedback sites in November, maybe a week or two in. I'm sending it to lady editor at the same time.

I'm really pleased with how it looks so far. I don't have to slash and burn as much as I used to. I'm either becoming a better writer or a crappier editor. Let’s hope for the former.

I spent most of my time this weekend working on the book trailer. My Saturday night was watching Arthur, drinking a bunch of wine and animating leaves. The leaves ended up looking not awesome, so I deleted them on Monday. What's the moral of the story, kids? Don't drink and animate.

I tried to upload the video to Blogger but that function doesn't appear to be working. I shall try again upon the morrow.

animation update, part, uh, 3?

I did a little work on the trailer this week. I had hoped to have a significant bit of it to show off on the blog by now. I'm still relatively new to the whole animation thing, and I'm still trying to find my rhythm in Flash.

Since I last posted, I have determined that tweening is not the miracle I thought it was. Tweening is where you create two keyframes on the timeline and Flash automatically creates the states between those keyframes. Tweening works flawlessly for movement, not so flawlessly for shape morphing. Adobe hasn't quite worked out the bugs on that one.

The shapes I'm using (plant stems and vines) are complicated. Whenever I try to tween them, even if it's just a little, they implode. They get all wonky on the screen. It's kind of trippy sometimes but not really the effect I was going for. I'm spending more time trying to fix implosions than I would spend just animating frame by frame.

So I'm switching over to frame by frame. I'll bust out the bamboo tablet and get to painting. I'll have more freedom with the drawing that way anyway. There is a slim chance I might have some part of the trailer finished and ready to show off next week. But I also have 30+ pages of on-paper editing changes to enter too, so I guess I'll have to see which way the wind blows this weekend.

animation update

I spent a lot of time studying adobe flash, etc this past weekend. I plan to incorporate animation in my book trailers.

Adobe is really good at providing instructions on their products. The training video library on their website is extensive, which is wonderful because I need all the help I can get.

One thing adobe is not very good at is letting fireworks play nice with flash. I do all of my digital illustration in fireworks. It would be nice to be able to draw in fireworks and send it over to flash. Weird things happen when you try to do that. Textures are lost. Vector shapes magically change size. It's frustrating.

However.

Flash has its own drawing tools. Not as good as fireworks but they're sufficient. Do I sound like a spoiled baby yet?

I can do vector shapes. That's the important thing. As far as creating movement, Flash is pretty darn awesome. It can insert frames between two states so i don't have to work frame by frame. That handy function is called “tweening”. It’s very cool, even if there are some limitations.

I estimate the blooming flower animation to take about 8 hours to complete. I am somewhat relieved to feel like the animation is something I’ll be able to handle.

So where am I on the next actual trailer? I have story boards with words and pictures. Next I'm working on rough sketches for the finer points of the animation, like the blooming flowers. They will probably not be anatomically (should one use "anatomically" when talking about plants?) correct but still interesting to watch. That's the important thing.

The only animation I completed so far is a stem growing across the bottom of the movie. That is not very interesting to watch so I'm going to wait until I have more to put it up on the blog.

TTFN

_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1

making things move

I've been watching a lot of book trailers lately for the work I do on Journey Reader. Some stand out. Others don't.

I have created one book trailer. It was basically some illustrations and words put to music. Nothing dynamic, really. Nothing special about it. Well, maybe the illustrations were special enough to count for something.

I tried my best to keep it from being too powerpointy, but it could have been better. I don't find slideshows all that compelling. Don’t get me wrong, using a slideshow set to music is better than no trailer, for sure.

However, the fact that the trailer has almost no movement to it bothers me. All trailers I do from here on out will probably have some kind of animation to them. I don't mean like Disney style animation, of course, but some movement on the screen is far more preferable to none.

The next book trailer project will be for the annabeth series.

Here's what I'm thinking.

There are some gardens and flowers in the first book so I'm using that. I may also include Poe the crow and maybe Dorian, AB's gray tabby as well.

At the end of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (genius, truly), the credits roll in this frame of flora. As a song is playing, flowers and toadstools and vines are appearing and blooming around the credits. It's very cool. I want to do something like that with the AnnaBeth trailer, but with, you know, my stuff. Mine probably won't be quite that cool because I'm not a professional animator, but one has to try, at least.

You may be asking - didn't she just say she WASN'T doing Disney-style animation? Yes I did. You are right. Technically Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was a Disney production. Award yourself 6 points and eat a cookie. I meant like Cinderella or Lion King kind of animation.

I have never animated anything before, so this should be an interesting learning process. Flash and I will be getting to know eachother better very soon. If I get any preliminary animations going, I will post them, unless they look like crap, in which case you'll never know they existed.

_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1