HOW THE WEB2DELIGHT TEASER WAS BORN....
ME AND MY COLLEAGUE, SHODAN KARKERA GOT THIS GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO DESIGN A TEASER FOR http://www.web2delight.com/. WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO START WITH. ALL WE HAD WAS FOUR LINES OF TEXT THAT NEEDED TO BE DISPLAYED. THE PRODUCT WAS A SOFTWARE. WE STARTED THINKING AT THE USER'S PERSPECTIVE. GOOGLE WAS ONE GREAT HELP FOR US, AND AS EVERY DESIGNER NEEDS A STARTER, WE STARTED CHECKING SOFTWARE WEBSITES, LOGOS, ICONS AND MORE.
STAGE 1: THE THEME:
The theme needed to be technical rather than just flashy. We planned on a gadget display. We were not supposed to reveal the software secrets. So Shodan, good at vector designing and texturing created a TFT screen. This TFT Screen needed to be special without much buttons but still having the egdy look of an unseen gadget. We got the desired output.
STAGE 2: THE EFFECTS:
We had four lines of text which described about softwares of today and what we are to deliver. We wanted the texts to go special over the display. A simple fade ina nd fade off would really be injustice. So why not give a scanning effect which exists only in military examples?, there we were at last after a lot of redisigning. We got a scanline which matched the website theme and we got it placed in the exact point where a military GPS would like it to be. It looked really gorgeous.
STAGE 3: SOPHISTICATION:
Anyone could do this. Am i right? So we dicided to complex it. This is where we got smoke in the background and a text cursor which looked different from normal. Smoke was designed by Shodan and I animated it in such a say that it looked like an AFTEREFFECTS plugin in flash. The smoke came out to be superb and the cursor was just perfect for the display and the effects.
STAGE 4: THE DIMENSION:
We wanted the ending to be sort of "BREAK THE DA VINCI CODE", so we planned to give the audience an idea of the software we were portraying. So I decided to gt 3DS MAX into picture. Now 3DS MAX is worlds best 3D software in terms of architecture, animating and modelling. We got a 3 POINT perspective of a huge cube carrrying the logos of MAC TIGER and MAC LEOPARD on it's faces. This animation was loaded in the climax of the teaser which gave it a cool 'out of the cube' look because of the 3 POINT perspective.
STAGE 5: THE LOADER:
The preloader wasnt so difficult because it was my baby. I had planned this effect very long back but never got a chance to use it. This time Shodan gave me what I wanted - a realistic glass tube. And I made a blubbery fluid gushing to the top as the loading went on. The loader also displayed the file size!! and the amount of data being loaded!!
STAGE 6: THE COUNTDOWN:
Being on the user's perspective isn't that easy. Everytime he opens the site he would see the same animation and efects. So we thought of pouring some 'hope tonic' into it. I developed a dynamic countdown which would run to the target launching date. It showed days remaining, time remaining to the target. Now isn't this giving some relaxation? This can get the audience back to the space after some time.
STAGE 7: OPTIMIZATION:
The most important part of designing for WEB 2.0. Every design needs to be optimised, else the beauty doesnt count. The first version of the teaser was 4MB. It would be real bulky uploading it. We optimised the images, get down PNG's to JPG'S AND BMP'S TO VECTOR GRAPHICS, REDUCED THE BITRATE OF THE MUSIC. And with great care we managed to get a 1.3 MB, undegraded web2delight teaser.
The story ends here. KDX DESIGNS.
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