Court of the Air promo movie

I do like a book promo when it's well-designed, well-executed and, above all, intriguing. In a comment on my recent post about my reading list backlog, Brian Edwards of SciFind.co.uk points me in the direction of the Flash promo for Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air - hosted by SciFind - which meets all three criteria quite nicely.

It's stylish: smoothly animated and sound-tracked with mood music and sound effect rather than any sort of cheesy author's voice-over. It also introduces the main characters and their situation - chock full of deadly peril and drama-inducing conflict - without giving away any more information than you'd expect from the publishers' blurb, so no major spoilers.

So overall I'd say it had a generally beneficial effect; on balance I for one would be more likely to pick up the book having seen the trailer. Job done.

Okay, some folks might be put off by the stylised, comics-esque animation, but I don't think that would be too much of a problem among the book's likely core, genre reading audience. So it's targeted as well, which is all to the good.

Check it out: www.scifind.co.uk/courtoftheair/.

April 6, 2007 | Filed Under Animation, Books, Marketing | Leave a Comment

What really happened when the Death Star blew up…

Via When Gravity Fails, the Solaris Books editors' blog...

Love it :)

April 5, 2007 | Filed Under Animation, Humour | Leave a Comment

Take a look: Jasper Morello

Charley Parker's Lines and Colors is one of my favourite blogs (one of only six in my 'read every day' list, as it happens). Recently it featured a rather stunning piece of animated film called The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.

Directed by Anthony Lucas and written by Mark Shirrefs, it's a series of rather superb silhouette animation pieces that tells the story of one Jasper Morello, an airship navigator from the city of Gothia.

Charley sums it up nicely in his blog post on the piece: "The films are set in a somewhat dystopian world with a decidedly steampunk look and feel. It's in the graphical representation of that world, full of arcane Victorian machinery, elaborate airships, cranes, gantries, gears and attendant intricate objects that the silhouette format becomes a brilliant choice."

The Gothia Gazette is the official website for the series, and has details of a DVD release, which unfortunately is only available in the Antipodes at the moment.

Here's the first trailer, and you can find other sections on Wired.com. Quite lovely stuff, do take a look.