Design Strategies Of Animation-based Map Storytelling

Story Map or Map Storytelling is the combination of maps and stories,and it becomes a hot spot in recent cartography research.Maps are more expressive in the interpretation of spatial relations and the narratives from a macro perspective,meanwhile stories can guide readers' thinking process through the rearrangement of events and construct meaning for geographical objects presented in the map.But in most cases of static maps and interactive maps,the narrative performance of maps in the time dimension hardly collaborated with the progress of stories,so the cases didn't fuse maps with stories very well.With the introduction of animation technology,the spatial expression is associated with the time dimension in maps,maps can change in time with the progression of the narrative,showing a unique advantage in the fusion of maps and scripts of stories.However,previous studies on map storytelling mainly focused on maps' performance in narratives in specific cases and summarized narrative techniques and design principles preliminarily,they didn't pay enough attention to the arrangement of scripts in the narrative process,and the proposed design principles were also relatively abstract,which made it difficult to provide direct guidance for animation design of map storytelling.This paper drawed on the classic theory of “story and discourse” in narratology,and divided map storytelling animation into two parts: spatial stories and map animation,corresponding to the "story" and "discourse" in narratology,and then designed map storytelling animation from two aspects: the arrangement of spatial stories and the design of map animation.This paper mainly completed the following works:Firstly,this paper analyzed the narrative potential of geographic events from two aspects: comprehensiveness of data,the integrity of the narrative logic and the dramativity of stories' theme.And I proposed strategies for mining the narrative potential,based on which geographic events are organized into spatial stories.Secondly,this paper analyzed common narrative effects,and abstracted elements and techniques of narration – storytelling tropes,including continuity,association,focus,repetition,scenes and mood.Thirdly,I analyzed the design process of map storytelling animation,extracting basic maps,transitions,dynamic map symbols,sounds and other design elements in map animations,and analyzed the preference of these design elements for storytelling tropes,and then proposed narrative-oriented design schemes respectively.Finally,for verifying and analyzing the feasibility of design process and strategies proposed in this paper,I designed a relatively complete case of map storytelling animation for "Tracing East China Normal University in Maps",analyzed and mined the narrative potential of spatial stories,and then designed basic maps,transitions,dynamic map symbols,sounds and other design elements in map storytelling animation.The practice shows that the analysis and mining of narrative potential strengthened the internal association of materials and formed a clear narrative logic;the strategies of map storytelling animation contributed to improve the narrative effect of map animation.In the end,the design strategies improved the fusion of maps and narratives in both the story and the discourse.