Recently one of my readers asked me about using Flash CS5.5 to create a trailer for their new iPad^R book app. Because they had used Flash^R to create the app, they wanted to know if it was possible to create a movie style trailer for marketing their new book app on YouTube^R and reuse some of the animations created for the app.

To be honest, most people consider After Effects^R for this type of project. There are many tutorials on this subject but few for Flash. So I decided to watch as many book trailers that I could find on YouTube, to determine just what these trailers had in common.

One design element that most of these trailers had was text effects and animation, sometimes called a title sequence. A second element was scenes of some of the interaction and animation on the pages of the book app. Let's take a look at one of my favorite book trailers for The Nutcracker HD by ideatory.

1. The first animation is a blur and zoom of the book app title. The text is simply white on a solid black background.
   
   The Nutcracker HD
   by ideatory
   
   
2. Next, the name of the original story and author have the same blur effect but this time slide in from the left and right of the stage.
   
   Original Story by E.T.A. Hoffmann
   'The Nutcracker and the Mouse King'
   
   These two lines of text pause briefly and then continue moving in the same direction until they are again off the stage.
   
   
3. Next we repeat the same slide in animation for two more lines of text.
   
   The Interactive book
   with Tchaikovsky's Ballet Music
   
   
4. Then, we repeat the first blur and zoom animation for the words "Layered Animation!".
   
   At this point, we begin to see some of the animation on the pages of the book app intersperse between more of the same text animation. Each line of text identifies one of the features of the book app such as "Tilt and touch your iPad!" and "Physics Engine!". The trailer ends with the call to action text "NOW ON APPSTORE!".
   

As you can see, creating a trailer such as this would be easy to do in Flash.

The Nutcracker HD by ideatory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=navFAIXykHs
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-nutcracker-hd/id407180511?mt=8

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