Adobe Illustrator Time-Lapse Map Video

By John Potter

I was recently contracted by the beautiful tourist attraction, Flamingo Gardens, in Davie, Florida to redesign their visitor’s map. You may recall that I did some panoramic photography for them previously and posted an article about that.

This was a very exciting project for me, and I decided to record the project in on going screen capture and made a time-lapse video of the process from it like I did with my “Photoshop Time-Lapse Video.“. The map required a lot of skill, patience and a variety of techniques and tools in Adobe Illustrator. Further complicating issues, the tree canopy at the park is so thick that aerial photography is not helpful at all. I started out sketching the paths, but later switched to a hand held GPS. It was very helpful, but I still found I needed to clean up the design and revisit the park to verify the accuracy. I also did some more detailed sketching during that visit. At that point, I had a good basis to start with. From there on it was lot’s of dedicated work and patience. I utilized a lot of custom textures and brushes I have made over the years and created quite a few new ones as well. Some parts were more of a technical challenge while other parts allowed me to draw in a freehand style. A project this big was bound to supply variety.

There were, of course, revisions and changes that are not all reflected in the video and in the interest of not boring anyone to death not every tree, shrub and shelter is rendered in the video.

I have really enjoyed working on this project. This map is a quantum leap ahead for Flamingo Gardens in legibility and comprehension as well as aesthetics. Now they will have a map that will keep their guests from getting lost and make a nice souvenir as well. The map should be released to the public in or around April.

The video is available below from Vimeo and my server and it is also available from Youtube.

This project is featured on Digital Urban!

(more…)