Creating Computer Map Animations

One nice thing about creating a video for YouTube is having a good example of technology that I can reference. Collecting videos and photos is relatively easy. When it came to adding animated maps of where Goblin Valley is located, I did not know what to do. I knew that Google has a pretty good maps of anywhere in the world and so I started there. I tried to do everything with Google Maps but then thought about using Google Earth. Earth is better for doing flyovers like I have at the beginning of the video (at 0:29). You are limited with the web version of Google Earth and I recommend the stand-alone application as it is significantly more flexible.

So how did I do the animations for the other 2 maps (at 1:25 and 5:56)? I asked one of my coworkers for ideas and he suggested using Microsoft PowerPoint. I know how to do that and so I took a screen shot from Google Maps, loaded it into PowerPoint, then added some circles and arrows. Now I just needed to record the animation on my screen. I used the Quicktime player on my Mac to do that. How? Well Quicktime allows you to do screen recordings. I simply started Quicktime and went into the "File" menu where there is a "New Screen Recording" menu item. It brings up a red record button. When I clicked on the button, it asked me to select the part of the screen I wanted to record. Once I selected it, a large "Start Recording" button appeared. Then when I was done recording, I brought up the application bar and right-clicked on the Quicktime icon. It brought up a menu with a menu item to "Stop Recording." Quicktime then allows you to save the MP4 movie file anywhere you want.

Once I had all of my videos, photos, and animations, I combined them all together using iMovie. Everything came together quite easily looked great. The last thing I did was to add in music and my narration. For that I used GarageBand, but this is a topic for another post.

Mentoring

Last night I flew home from the Bay Area so I could see my daughter dance at BYU's Christmas Around the World. One of the regulars who also lives in Salt Lake but works in San Francisco joined me on the flight. It worked out well because he gave me a ride home from the airport and that gave us a chance to talk.

Yesterday was a traumatic day from my fellow commuter. He works for an animation studio and one of his fellow animators was let go. The reason for being fired was because the animator had failed to keep up with the latest technology. New guys were coming in and running circles around him. He had been warned but failed to act and was now paying the price.

My friend and I discussed how to keep from becoming irrelevant in the constantly changing hi-tech industries in which we work. Interestingly enough, we both came to the same conclusion. Both of us have taken fellow co-workers under our wings to help mentor. In return, those that we are mentoring are helping us by showing us all of the latest technologies. It is a win-win situation for all parties. Mentoring is often seen as someone with experience helping a novice, but that isn't the only help taking place.