The Making of the “Peep & Egg: I’m Not Hatching” Book Trailer

Step One: Storyboard

Planning and organizing a book trailer.

Book trailers serve as a visual synopsis, but without the perfect story that teases or tells the actual plot of the book, you will not have a successful book trailer. That’s the importance of story boarding! This is a technique animators use to create individual images to act as the visual outline of the story.

Step Two: Gather Sources

The materials are what you work with!

1) Text
2) Original illustrations
3) Publisher logos/book covers

With every book trailer you need to include all three of these, unless you are including a narrated sound track of the story. The publisher’s logos are one of the most important materials. These serve as a landing page at the end of every book trailer.

Step Three: Animation

Bringing your scenes and characters to life!

There are several animation programs available. This trailer was created using Adobe After Effects CS6, Illustrator CS6 and Photoshop CS6 to create the Peep & Egg book trailer. There were over 100 layers in this trailer with many masking and simple rotation techniques used to animate the characters you see on the screen. The scene with the farm animals took the longest and included the most layers because of the moving text, zooming and rotating characters, and image panning.

Step Four: Approval

The author, illustrator and publisher’s review.

Book trailers take you inside the character’s world, just like cartoons and animated movies do. Their importance is to help guide the viewer, whether a parent, teacher or reluctant reader, on the journey and get them excited about reading the book!

What are some of your favorite book trailers? We have a ton! And be sure to check back with KidLit TV for more book trailer premieres from some of the latest and greatest kid lit!