Esri released their ArcGIS StoryMaps Frames app into beta in November 2025, a “mobile-first short-form storytelling format for ArcGIS StoryMaps.” If you couldn’t already tell from my portfolio—I’m a fan of StoryMaps—and so I did this project as an excuse to try out the new app. I share most of my personal work on social media and am assuming that most people likely interact with it on mobile devices, so the option to have a format optimized for small, portrait-oriented screens was compelling to me.
This bite-sized story offers a tour of famous whirlpools (maelstroms) around the world. When people think of whirlpools, they probably picture the big, fictional, ship-eating sort found in books and film—which don’t exist. But there are real whirlpools out there that inspired them, albeit they are much more demure (to use Dictionary.com’s 2024 Word of the Year, two years too late). Some of those real-world inspirations are highlighted in the story.
I also wanted to try out a map with animated icons and drew the ones in this project frame-by-frame with the Procreate app on iPad (exported as simple GIFs). I also drew the map “monsters” and animated the cover image in that app, too. The basemap is the Watercolor basemap from the ArcGIS Living Atlas, with some additional effects applied within the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer to desaturate it and push it into the background more. I also added an additional white landmass layer and applied the ‘soft light’ blend mode, to help add contrast between the land and sea—as the original basemap was a bit muddy at larger scales.