The adventure is in the animation with this book trailer for James Patterson’s The Plunder Down Under
Everyone’s favorite teenage treasure hunters are back in this amusing animation by our phenomenal 3D animator David Hixon. The Plunder Down Under is Book 7 in Jimmy P’s vaunted Treasure Hunter kids series. It’s both a testament to this series’ longevity and the authors’ creativity that it’s still as fresh and fun as the first book in the saga!
Animation-wise, this project is reminiscent of some of our other children’s book animation projects, like Jacky Ha Ha. The challenge David faced with this animation was the necessity to use art from the book cover, but with the lack of having photoshop files.
To make this happen, David used a software that was specifically designed to “unsample” images and convert them into a larger size that could be used for a full-screen animation. This mixed with hand-drawn backgrounds created a scene made for adventure! David worked with other elements that allowed for the animation of characters without having different layered files to work with.
Overall, we never want to copy another artist’s work unless it is essential for a project, like in the case of The Plunder Down Under. David did a great job giving this commercial a visual feeling of the book. Throw in our in-house VO talent, Kelsey Cherney, and we bring this spot all of the danger and adventure it needs!