Map Motion Design Reel 2023 | Rostam Productions

The Map Motion Design Reel was inspired by my own love of history and as well as by Motion Design trends I've seen. I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and design some of my own; not just for aesthetic value but for educational as well.

First I took note of popular creators' use of maps and mimiced them. When I felt confident in my abilities I jumped right into it, sketching out my ideas on paper. Some maps required thinking outside the box.

Since this reel was entirely plugin-less, I needed to find creative ways to make aesthetics. For example, in this Cold War themed map, I wanted the feel of dusty and forgotten CIA dossier. I started with a free map made of strokes from Adobe Stock and then continued to add/blend other elements on. More subtly, I applied various noise effects and mattes to make the lines of the map feel they were made of faded ink.

Since my first projects my workflow has become more streamlined. Animations were completed first before work began on the map's aesthetic. Lastly, in a final composition I animated the camera and 3D movement to keep everything as non-destructible as possible.

The rest of the Cold War sequence had a submarine console that I animated and and modeled in Blender. This included making a loopable radar animation in After Effects first before importing it into Blender.

The same workflow applied to the Radar animation. Animation came first before effects and color were added. I had to make sure that the movement was solid.

The CRT look of the radar screen was done by mimicing the Phosphor dots used by CRT televisions in After Effects. I created a massive grid of small red, green, and blue, pixels before spliting the radar composition into red, green, and blue channels.

I wanted the whole sequence to feel cinematic, like a titlecard to a show. Even in map animation, which is more static than other Design, I wanted to feature transitions. That is why the console rotates out to the map on the table.

Some maps required a close up of a specific area. I wanted to demonstrate that I could create local maps as well.

These maps required more thought than the world maps did because there were no geographical assets to speed up their creation. In addition, I had to do more extensive research on the geography of a region to accurately depict it. For example, I studied maps and writing on the Battle of Gettysburg before creating the Little Round Top shot.

Illustrating the map was a separate challenge and took some trial and error. First I started with a flat texture that was corrected and tinted. Then, I had to familiarize myself more with Photoshop's brushes. The brushes were used not just for shading hills and rivers, but also to quickly replicate the forest texture over a large area. In addition, noise textures were used to create the rocks, and the road was a heavily corrected image of dirt. Once the map was complete, elements could be animated on top of it in a non-destructive process.