Your Favorite Movies Laid Out as Vintage Treasure Maps

As reported on Wired.

BY VALENTINA PALLADINO

If you are both a movie buff and a map addict, this is going to be fun.

These wonderfully detailed maps show character journeys and iconic locations in some classic adventure movies. Can you guess which movie each map represents? The map above is relatively easy to decipher, but some on the following pages are more challenging. We’ve got all the answers below, hidden by our anti-spoiler redaction machine. Highlight each answer to reveal it, or uncover them all at once with the toggle.

Illustrator Andrew DeGraff created these maps using a palette of two to 15 premixed colors of gouache with color blocking and line on top to make each map look almost like a vintage treasure map, embellished with colored accents and lines to bring specific locations to life, and to map out the paths of famous characters.

However, unlike a treasure map, you’re not looking for one X to mark the spot of the movie’s finished story. Half the fun is following each colored line and tracing the paths of the characters at your own pace, feeling like you are on the same journey they took. The other half could come from a combination of challenging your friends to a location-based movie trivia showdown, and noticing all the little details DeGraff included from each movie.

DeGraff says he originally envisioned the maps as infographics for each movie, but as he developed the idea and worked out kinks along the way, he found them to be more like playful representations. “I’ve always been a little obsessed with scale models, and I think that feeling of a precious, complete, little recreation is what the maps embody,” he said.

“Taking these big sweeping stories and packaging them into these paintings allows them to be absorbed in a flash, but also to be explored over time. Rather than being like infographics, they end up being much more like toys made from the plot of the films.”

He’s got plans to make more maps for movies, including The Princess Bride, The Wrath of Kahn, and The Shining, and he has a Lord of the Rings map in the works (see DeGraff’s initial sketch below) but for now, we’ll be consumed with these… at least for the next few days.

See how many movies you can decipher from the maps in this gallery (All illustrations copyright Andrew DeGraff). Scroll down for the answers.