Cartographic Animation

Cartographic Animation is a dynamic map that uses animation to present concepts of time or movement across a geographic area. They may show changes to a specific area, such as development, over a specific time, or movement across geography, as an animated map of traffic patterns would show. One of the first examples of modern Cartographic Animation is one from 1939 made by Disney Studios using traditional cel animation, showing the German Army’s march and encirclement of Warsaw, Poland. Today, all the techniques of animation can be utilized to create maps, though most are produced with computer animation software, and there is an increasing level of interaction available to the end user. The map above is a times-series cartographic animation that shows urban growth in the Baltimore-Washington Dc corridor over a period of 200 years.