When it came time to do a book trailer for Graffiti Hack I did a paper cutout stop motion animation. For Spoonful Chronicles book trailer I came up with idea that the novel is mistaken for food, roasted in the oven like a chicken or a turkey and eaten. For Take The Highway book trailer, I wanted to do something new. I came up with the idea of words into images animation concept. Have a look here.

I started with a simple graphic of a walking woman. You might recognize this shape from my: ” Vote for your favorite book cover and title combo ” blog post. I imagined that Carmen is going for a walk and words float out of her head and float all around her, beginning to tell her story.

Words show up as legs that leave behind a trail.

Carmen is sleeping and words are floating above her head in the the air. As if materializing from dreamland into reality.

Carmen is driving a war and words appear as buildings that pass her by. This image is inspired by the ending scene from Quentin Tarantino Kill Bill movie.

Words turn into aggressive hands that push and pull on Carmen until she falls down. Will she be able to pick herself up?

Certain portion of the video the words circle around in on themselves to symbolize routine. Things that happen again and again.

For the parts involving the word “perspective” I wanted to animate words reflected in eyes. The eyes shut and open.

For the parts that describe Carmen’s life spiraling out of control I wanted to create words into images animation that makes it seem as if the words are spiraling out of control as well.

As usual, I underestimated how much work it would be to create a words into images animation. I spent two weeks working on this. Frequently feeling like I wanted to tear my hair out in frustration.