I’m a tekkie but basically clueless about animation. Seeking examples/tutorials for an animated historical map project for noncommercial site. Briefly: starting with undeveloped land, town grows (representational houses and buildings accumulate), walls added, larger representational structures replace smaller ones, and so on, with dates and brief explanatory captions. Simple sketch artwork from AI, if that’s good. Some historical graphics may be used as well.
TIA
Is this animated map going to be a collection of images~graphics over extended discrete time periods - or - is it a continuous expression?
e.g. Images~graphics showing changes every 5 (or whatever) years - or - are we showing the changes every time a new structure~change is added (like a stop animation effect)?
Thanks for your question.
Nothing continuous – we don’t have the data.
I think it could all be done by cross-fades (correct term?) from the same map outline to the next with later features. First from the pre-developed state to a small village to a walled city… We have information about roughly 5 approximate developmental points-in-time (Hype Scenes, maybe?).
It would be useful to have some additional animation effects for illustration, as simple as adding call-outs to label a small number of specific points-of-interest. Or maybe adding (or subtracting) structures in groups.
More ambitious: we know a specific institution-of-interest was moved from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’ in a specific year. It would be helpful to animate that specific transition to put it in contrast to the slowly-changing and fuzzy longer picture.
I think You would do well to define your discrete time periods using Scenes.
However, I would not do a “Scene” cross-fade from one map outline to the other. You have more creative control if You do an “instant” scene transition, then make the changes. Hype can not run timelines during transitions.
As an example: “Scene 1” has the “Original Village” map. Do a Scene transition (instant) to “Scene 2” - which features the exact same map at the end of “Scene 1” - at time “0:00” on the timeline of Scene 2. Now in “Scene 2” do your animation of the change from the original Village map to the next rendition. This approach allows for more creative control over how the animation occurs: the manner in which the buildings show up with accompanying text (or other narrative devices) - all of which can be run on the timeline in “Scene 2”.
Does this make sense?
Thanks for your suggestions. It makes general sense to me, as much as it can without actually trying it, since I’ve never done anything similar. I’ll post back when I’ve got some actual experience.