I’ve had quite a few requests for a review of the first map above, which is concept art for the movie Zootopia by art director, Matthias Lechner. The map does appear briefly at one point of the movie as well.

Leaving aside the logistical nightmare that would occur from having so many loop lines in a transit system, this is a fun little map. As one might expect from a Disney film, it comes across almost like a transit system for a theme park, with separate themed zones or regions, with distinct and definite boundaries between them. Tundratown (which I’m guessing is cold, having not seen the film yet) gives way instantly to the tropical Rainforest District and so on. The names of the stations are also themed – Frosty Road, Drift Street, Avalanche Avenue, etc. in the aforementioned Tundratown – which is either cute or twee, depending on your outlook.

Designwise, the map is pretty simple. The background colours are perhaps a little heavy, the geography seems overly detailed, and the labelling of stations is a little haphazard: lots of angles and names cutting across route lines. The ZTA logo is a little uninspired as well, but this is a neat concept.

It is interesting to compare this concept map to one that appears on a large format cinema standee (second picture above, photo taken by me). This represents a strip map in a subway car, and has a definite – and almost certainly intentional – New York vibe to it. The routes seem to be quite different to those in the concept map: a lot of the route and station names are the same, but they’ve all been moved around a lot, with almost all the stations seemingly located on one central trunk line. Strangely, all the lines are now called loops, but none of them actually seem to form an actual loop! I do like the icons for the trains to the left: each one has ears that correspond to the type of animal referenced – mouse ears for the Little Rodentia Loop, for example.

Source: Matthias Lechner’s Zootopia concept art page (right at the bottom, but look at everything – it’s all gorgeous!)