Americana Landmarks 404 Page Series
For this project, I was required to create a minimum of one 404 page to animate with the software of my choice. I was then prompted to put my 404 page into Adobe Express to give it a URL. It was a pretty open-ended project, I just had to make sure the 404 page would make the viewer want to stay on the page as long as possible.
From this project, I was excited to try my hand at animation. I thought it would be a valuable skill to carry with me into my career to make projects more inviting. I decided early on through talking to peers that Adobe Animate would be the most beginner-friendly software to pick up.
From this project, I was excited to try my hand at animation. I thought it would be a valuable skill to carry with me into my career to make projects more inviting. I decided early on through talking to peers that Adobe Animate would be the most beginner-friendly software to pick up.
For my ideation process, I first started by making word lists on post-it notes while under a time limit. I find that my brain works better under pressure, and I write down some super out of left field ideas when I have a time limit. I did this in 3 rounds, and included words, ideas and pictures. After these exercises, I had plenty of ideas to choose from.
To create my final pages, I started by drawing shapes with the blob brush tool and the shape tools in Adobe Illustrator. I then added my signs and textures to give the pages more dimension. Being in Portfolio class, I decided to create three 404 pages it order to make it a series. My themes came out to be based on Americana Landmarks; Route 404 (Route 66) Area 404 (Area 51), and Mount Rush404 (Mount Rushmore).
I did not do much work on Adobe Express during this project. I created and illustrated my pages in Illustrator, and I animated them in Adobe Animate. I really only used Adobe Illustrator for posting my pages to the web to acquire URL’s.
From this project, I learned more about 404 pages as a whole. In addition to this, I learned a good deal about Adobe Animate, which I plan to continue tinkering with in the future. I also felt more conscious about the user’s thought process while creating these pages - trying to make it as engaging as possible so the viewer will stay for as long as possible.
