Yesterday marked Google Maps’ 12th birthday. To celebrate, Matteo Archondis decided to make a global travel experience made entirely out of Google Maps screenshots. With a total number of 3,305 screenshots, we can’t imagine how many days of work it took to create this hyperlapse, but it’s an impressive one!
“The idea was to show the tools we have to discover the world around us, even if we can’t afford to travel to places far away from home,” Archondis tells PetaPixel. He explains that taking the screenshots was the easy part, unlike the stabilization and tracking to create the actual smooth scene to scene footage. It was particularly tough to “find tracking points in clips that are really moving fast and have no reference points.”
Born in 1996, Archondis probably has a great career still ahead of him. He’s currently studying communication and graphic design in Verona, Italy, and says film making has been an important part of his life for a long time now, especially since he discovered the art of hyperlapse and motion related techniques. Check out many more of his experiments on his YouTube channel and Instagram page. Also make sure you check out his website for new and unique travel experiences.