Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Using Advanced Animation Techniques

With all my affection for PowerPoint, I haven't really gotten too deep into PowerPoint animation. So this week, I want to open up some possibilities.

By way of review, last year I went through the steps for making an animated holiday card. We also looked at animating chart elements a few weeks ago. And, last week, I used a simple path animation in the Custom Animation Task Pane of PowerPoint to move a transparent GIF image across the screen.

But it is worth thinking about the actual purpose of PowerPoint animation: to help you tell your story, and to introduce your objects in the slide like actors on the stage of a play.

The most basic way to do this is to use the so-called Animation Schemes task pane. By applying an Animation Scheme, such as Fade In, to a single slide, the bullets animate one by one, allowing the speaker to concentrate on her message point by point.

Some Animation Schemes also affect the slide titles, but that's where their effects end. They don't apply to other elements in the slide that can be animated.

Figure 1

The way to add a lot more functionality in your animations is to go directly to the Custom Animation Task Pane.

Take a look at the Custom Animation Task Pane for the title and bullet slide to which I just added an Animation Scheme.

The little guide numbers in the slide show me that animation has already been added (by the Animation Scheme) and Fade In will happen to the title when the slide appears.

Then with each click of the mouse I can make the next event happen – in this case one bullet after the next.

The title is shown being animated With Previous (which means with the previous click event – in this case the appearance of the slide).

The bullets are to appear one by one on click.

Figure 2

What if I want to add a picture to the mix here? I would first change the Slide Layout in the Slide Layout Task Pane to also include a Content placeholder.

The Content Panel makes room for itself and reformats our bullets. It has two icons: one to Insert a Picture from File, the other from the Clip Organizer, a tool we covered a while back for MS Word.

Figure 3

When we choose the Clip Organizer, we can search for images and other media. Here I've located a picture of a traffic jam.

When I double click the image I want, it goes into the Content placeholder in the slide. Now I can return to the Custom Animation Task Pane.

Figure 4

With the picture selected, I give it a different Entrance effect; I make it Dissolve In.

Figure 5

When the Entrance Effect (Dissolve In) is applied, it takes its place at the bottom of the Custom Animation Task Pane.

Figure 6

Now if I dragged this effect up one level, the picture would appear in the slide before the bullets, but after the title faded in.

What if I want more control? If I click the drop down arrow for the bullet Fade In Effect, I break it up into all four bullets, each one with its own click event.

Figure 7

Now, by clicking the Re-Order Up arrow at the bottom of the Task Pane, I can make the Dissolve In of the Picture go between the first and second bullet.

Figure 8

Now, what if I wanted the picture to appear with the appearance of the bullet, not after it, or timed more precisely?

The first thing I would do is to change the Timing of the Picture Entrance from On Click to With Previous.

I just click the drop down arrow for the Picture effect, select Timing, and make the change in the Dissolve In dialog box.

Figure 9

Now when I play the slide, the picture dissolves in as the first bullet appears.

Figure 10

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's click the drop-down arrow for the effect again. This time, instead of Timing, let's click to Show the Advanced Timeline.

Figure 11

Notice that a timer appears at the bottom of the panel. Now I can expand the panel to give myself more room – dragging its border to the left – and also Zoom In or Out of the Timeline to get the big picture or more detail.

In addition, the concurrent movement of the two elements which I have set to coordinate (With Previous) are indicated with stretches along the timeline in the panel.

Figure 12

As in a video editor, I can drag each of the effects forward or backward to follow or preceed the other, and fine tune their duration by dragging out the segments.

Figure 13

The With Previous command is very powerful. You can have a lot of fun by creating a more complex sequence where objects fly out and others follow them into the slide – like a movie credits sequence.

Here we have a more complex With Previous sequence for baking a cake; each part of the sequence leaves the slide with a Fly Out as the next one Flies or Zooms in. Notice that the speed at which it happens can be controlled, as well. In this case all ten of these moves happen automatically after just one trigger event: the one mouse click.

Figure 14

While Fly In/Fly Out makes a nice pair of Entrance/Exit effects here are others you can try:

Ascend/Descend
Expand/Contract
Rise/Sink
Faded Zoom Entrance/Faded Zoom Exit
Curve up/Curve down

This can also be an effective way to introduce more complex bullets to an audience, allowing them to absorb each thought slowly as you get your breath and drink. When the final bullet appears, you can explain the slide – hopefully without reading the bullets from the screen.

This is just the beginning of advanced animation using the Timeline. In the coming weeks, we will explore trigger events, and more sophisticated visual techniques for moving objects and showing and obscuring other parts of the slide.

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