This is the cleverest book cover / marketing / design I’ve seen in a long time. Somehow it’s a moving video/gif of the book cover, with two moving balls in the maze. How amazing would it be to have the scene of your book cover be a “movie” that actually moves, where pictures could dance or swim, faces could smile. Moving book covers (like the new iphones have those “moving photos”).
I’m going to figure out how to do this on my covers and branding material.
Yes TL is bound to have #OwnIt posts for next month. Stare at this. And do spread the word. https://t.co/v2fYRnnXvfpic.twitter.com/Hagh6pzfks
— Aparna Jain (@aparna_jain) December 8, 2015
There’s a whole page with examples of animated book design here. I’m just late to the party. But I’m excited to turn all my covers into animated ones! If anybody has info or knows whether Amazon will display animated gifs, I’d love to know.
Animated covers look amazing, and most authors still aren’t doing it. We need to work harder to find new ways to surprise and delight our readers. After I figure everything out and redo my covers, I’ll post a tutorial on how to make your own animated covers.
I made a video talking about how I’d use it and showing more examples of animated covers.
I was able to figure out the water effect pretty quickly; it’s a bit of flash code. I can put it on my website, but couldn’t share it on Twitter of anything. (I think I need to make a video of it, then convert the video to gif, but there has to be an easier way…)
I used Amanda Hocking’s “Wake” because the cover is pretty and underwater.
I found this site with a few nifty gif overlays. That’s a little much, but I like when it’s really subtle, and you notice after a minute that it’s moving. It works especially well with “light through trees” or water.
And if you think that’s cool, check these out!
These look better in my program (DP animation maker), with smoother transitions and longer effects… but the file size gets really large.
There’s a way to smoothen the loop so it doesn’t just stop and restart.
Still… pretty amazing.
I made a tutorial to making your own animated book covers and added it to my book cover design site, here:
How to make an ANIMATED book cover that blows people’s minds
I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.
4 Comments
Ok, those are so cool. I love the Wake cover and Dark Branches!
Seems a good idea. Although I doubt it would work with my covers. Shame. They do look great though 🙂
I disagree, I think these animated book covers look cheap and tacky, much like something you’d see off of the blog of a 13 year old girl in the early 2000s. I think when used very minimally (The balls moving in the maze) it looks interesting but the sparkles and water droplets seem more like something you’d see on a rainbow gradient background tumblr webpage. It’s a dislike for me.
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