Using the literal term for a map, I decided to use the street paths to spell a word; taking what was produced on street level which would mean nothing but when viewed from above it all becomes clear.
Even though paint would’ve been much easier, it would be illegal to permanently deface the property. Considering it is legal for street artists to use chalk, I decided that it would be a much wiser idea to use chalk to create the lines on the road.
First of all I used google maps to get a clear map to use to find out what roads I could use to draw chalk on. I used the word ‘neka’ which is an anagram of Kane and an alias I use (hence n3k4.com) and it seemed to fit very well into the shapes of the roads across central Plymouth.

Neka - essentially ‘tagging’ Plymouth

After this, it was time to gather the materials. It was surprisingly hard to find chalk but I got some in the end. Two friends helped out with filming the project and writing some of the chalk. We had a copy of the map in hand to work out where we were going.
The whole thing took a lot longer than I expected and we didn’t finish till it got quite late. It was also a lot of hard work, afterwards my legs were strained and I couldn’t walk up stairs properly!

Chalking across a road

When the chalking was done and footage was collected, it was time to create the video. I decided to use the video format to present the project because you can show how the idea works from both levels, the floor and the sky. I edited the footage in Final Cut, which didn’t require much more than chopping and putting in some transitions and using After Effects to create the motion animations which showed the route of the chalking.

I’m quite happy with the final product, you can watch it below.

Or download the .WMV file from here.