Dynamic Cartography
An exploration of ways to inject life and motion into maps.
Animations
Below you will find video and animation outcomes of my work over the past year. I chose videos as one of the formats to create maps to allow me the most complete visual control. They also afford the user less obstacles to do to understand, such as multiple controls or instructions beyond pressing play. Maps that make use of form, line, shape, transparency and extrusion in order to show sea level rise, shoreline retreat, and storm surges.
Shape
Because this depicts a land mass completely engulfed, it boldly communicates the irreversibleness of sea level rise.
QGIS, Photoshop, After Effects
Form
Similar to the shape method, this extruded and shaded form animation has a cinematic drama to it, thanks to its mimicry of real land masses.
Cinema 4D, After Effects
Line
The method’s strength lies its ability to create 3 obvious division for map users: where the water was, where the water encroached to, and land.
QGIS, Photoshop, After Effects
Transparency
This cleanly creates divisions between sea level rise heights, and affords the viewer with the ability to track the encroachment of the water across the land mass.
QGIS, Photoshop, After Effects
Form I
Because GeoTIFFs store elevation data as a grey value — the darker the pixel the lower the elevation — I was able to exploit this with the Cinema 4D software and have pixels extrude based on color value to create a topographic plane. What I enjoy most about this rendering is that the pillars that make up the landscape are literally three-dimensionalized pixels.
Cinema 4D
Form II
Created in Cinema 4D from GeoTIFF, this topographic relief plane is smooth, continuous, and more in line with reality. It features a more sudden, less gradual animation of the process. Like the previous example it is built using data from GeoTIFFs.
Cinema 4D, After Effects
Shape
I felt it was important to have at least one depiction of shoreline retreat that took place on a flat plane. This piece builds from a granular, sandy disbursement of land working its way into larger disintegrating chunks washing away into the sea.
QGIS, Photoshop, After Effects
Form
The wave aspect of a surge is most physically apparent with this grid depiction. I had originally planned to have this wireframe grid be an overlay on top of another map, but eventually decided that the drama of the extruded black and white grid was really captivating.
Cinema 4D
Color
Depicting storm surges was an exercise in anticipation. I used a gradient for the building of the incoming tide and then a shift of color for when the land became awash.
QGIS, Photoshop, After Effects
Line
What attracted me most to experimenting with concentric lines was the simplicity of it. In clear contrast to the bold gestures of the other methods, this subtle march of lines offers a quieter but mounting dread to the viewer.
QGIS, Illustrator, After Effects