Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Story of an Under Construction Web Page



Before I begin let me warn you of a long blabber. With that said, here's the story!
Not so long ago there was a webpage that was faceless. It was under construction and all it had for a face was a plain statement "Web page under construction." It saddened it immensely that it's creators were negligent of its appearance. The most depressing part was, while it was visited by many everyday, the webpage would only leave its visitors disappointed with nothing to show or give.
One day a kind designer took pity on the faceless web page and decided to do something about it. The designer created a mask for the web page to wear while it waited for it's final identity. The mask was so good that to the web page's delight it was visited by an ever increasing number of visitors. The web page was never sad again and its visitors were not disappointed any more.
That was the sweet story of an under construction webpage. I have recently started taking interest in this blog. In my enthusiasm to write about my work, I created a couple of blank static pages as you can see in the top bar of this blog. People visited these pages expecting something nice to see but disappointingly there was nothing on these pages. So while busy developing the content for these pages I thought of putting a "web page under construction" statement on each of these pages. Such a simple quick fix solution! But is it worth visitor's time and effort? Worse, would he or she ever return back to check the blog again? I tried to recall different under construction pages from various websites that I had visited in the past. I could recall only those pages that were unique and creative in handling the issue. They didn't leave their visitors empty handed. If you come to think of it, the ways in which an under construction page can be shown creatively are immense. The design could be all wacky yet relevant to what the website is about. For example an under construction page of a website dealing with bakery products could show a cake being baked in an oven with a tag line, "this page is being baked, check back soon".
I decided to create my own "page under construction art".The result is what you see in the beginning of this post. I wanted the artwork and the subject to be well suited for a designer's blog. A friend of mine, Zinal Patel suggested me to create an animation to suit my profession as an animator and also to signify the inclination of this blog's content towards animation. I wanted the design to be such that, those who have met me earlier or have known me as a person should be able to relate with it yet the design should make sense to others who don't know me. So I made the character in the animation a caricature of mine and no I don't wear that costume for work. The character in the animation trying to work balancing himself on an unstable platform creates tension in the scene. Because of this the scene has the potential to turn into an adrenaline moment which keeps the viewer interested in the final outcome of this tension. It took me three days to create the above animation. It is created entirely in adobe flash to keep the size as low as possible for web viewing. The size of above animation is 50 KB.
That is all I have to write about a page under construction. I think, I have already blabbered enough. If you have any queries, post them in the comments and I'll be glad to answer them. 

6 comments:

akhilesh said...

interesting and inspiring...i like the humor behind the art work and it is decent ,neat,and innovative

Tuhin Paul said...

Thanks Akhilesh! glad you liked it.

Shubhi said...

Good one Tuhin...like it.:)

Tuhin Paul said...

Thanks Shubhi!

Zinal Patel said...

One of the best Under Construction Page visited by me. Really loved the style & humor. Tuhin, animation is definitely adding the spice. Keep Inspiring & Rocking.

See some more creative Under Construction Pages.

Tuhin Paul said...

Thanks Zinal!
and thanks for posting that link about Creative Under Construction Pages. Only drawback of putting an animation in a swf format is that a person without flash player in his browser wont be able to see it. One way out could be using a gif animation. But gif animations tend to be of large size and to lower its size one would have to compromise on the image quality. It seems every thing comes with its share of disadvantages.