Trying out Animation Desk app for the iPad: potential book trailer use?

I've had the Animation Desk app on my iPad ($4.99 in iTunes store right now) for ages but only finally got around to trying it out recently. I created the animation above in about an hour, and that included figuring out how to use the app. I have zero animation experience but still had a lot of fun. Next time, I may try adding some audio. :-)

I'M BORED Music Video - 11 more days until the launch, woohoo!

I'm Bored Music Video (inspired by the new picture book from Simon & Schuster BFYR) from debsanderrol on Vimeo.

Thanks to my friend Errol Elumir for co-writing the I'M BORED song and creating the video above to help celebrate my upcoming book launch. Note that the song is only loosely based on the book. To find out what REALLY happened to the potato and the end, please buy the book! :-)

And special thanks to 7-year-old Zoe Elumir for playing the part of the girl in this homemade video!

I've posted some behind-the-scenes photos and info about the video plus lyrics/chords to the song in the I'M BORED Scrapbook.

Creating book trailers for YA fiction anthology TOMO

As I've mentioned before, one of my short stories appears in the just-released YA fiction anthology, TOMO: Friendship Through Fiction (Stone Bridge Press, Mar/2012). Proceeds will benefit teens affected by the 2011 Japan quake/tsunami.

I created two book trailers to help promote the anthology. The editor, Holly Thompson, helped me collect the materials I needed.

Here's the shorter trailer (37 seconds):

and here's the longer trailer (1 minute, 20 seconds):

I used iMovie to create both. For the first, I used music that came with the iMovie software. Holly provided the music for the second trailer. I used Photoshop CS5 to create some of the background and compilation images.

I can already see places for improvement, but I only had a short time to put the trailer together and have very limited experience with book trailers. Learned a lot during the process! Like the importance of figuring out the purpose of book trailer before I start working on it, and to identify the target audience.

I never assume that people are going to be patient enough to watch through the entire trailer, so I purposely put the essential book info at the beginning of each trailer. At first, I worked on a trailer that was mainly focused on the disaster in Japan but then realized that people would assume most of the stories were going to be depressing or about the quake and tsunami (and they aren't!).

So I decided to put more of an emphasis on the people behind the project, especially editor Holly Thompson.

Anyway, I hope you like the trailers! Please do share them, and consider supporting the project by buying the book. You can find out more info about TOMO at:

http://tomoanthology.blogspot.com/