About Animated Map Maker

Animated Map Maker makes the map shots that explainer videos need: a country and its neighbours lighting up, a route drawn stop by stop, an army's advance and retreat. You fill in a form, time it to your voice-over and export an MP4. It is made by an independent developer.

How it works

Everything runs in your browser. The map is drawn on your computer and the video is encoded there too, so your projects, voice-over files and videos are never uploaded to us.

Map data

• Countries, coastlines, rivers, lakes and cities: Natural Earth (version 5.2), which is in the public domain. Country outlines are drawn at 1:50 million scale; neighbours are worked out from the 1:10 million data.
• Place names in other languages come from the same Natural Earth data.

Borders and disputed areas

Borders follow Natural Earth's default point of view. Where territory is disputed, that default may not match the view of every country or of your audience. If a specific border matters to your story, check it against an authoritative source before publishing. The historical examples hide modern borders on purpose, because today's borders would be wrong for those periods.

Historical examples

The examples (Alexander the Great, Napoleon in 1812, Operation Barbarossa) are simplified illustrations. Dates and figures follow standard published accounts, and the 1812 figures come from Charles Minard's 1869 chart. Please verify anything you publish against your own sources.

Contact

Questions, bug reports or ideas: hello@animatedmapmaker.com.