PowerPoint Blog
Labels: animation, interviews, powerpoint
Glen Millar is a MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for Microsoft PowerPoint. Based near Brisbane, Australia, Glen is a regular on the Microsoft support newsgroups, and a featured speaker at PowerPoint Live. Visit Glen's site, PowerPoint Workbench for tutorials on cool animation effects in PowerPoint.
Geetesh: You experiment a lot with animation in PowerPoint – in your opinion, where is the thin line that divides animation that is sufficient and enhancing from one that is too much and distracting. Is there a rule of the thumb that can act as a guideline, and what are your opinions?
Glen: Geetesh, that’s a really good question! There is a thin line between what is effective and what is gratuitous, or distracting. When I animate a presentation, I ask myself 3 questions:
Geetesh: Tell us about animation builds when successive animations play one after the other. How effective are such builds – please give examples and share your thoughts.
Glen: Successive builds are critically important! I’ve recently been quite concerned about the lack of continuity in our presentations and our graphics. Let me demonstrate with an example. The following two graphics are available as download-able clip art within PowerPoint.
Individually, they are great photos and display very good concepts. However, when I put them side-by-side I realized they contain the same people, but in different clothes. Now, professional movie makers employ continuity folks- people who check every feature of a shot to make sure it is consistent. You don’t want an actor walking down a road to suddenly appear in with a new shirt. Now, while this example is dramatic, it illustrates how important consistency is across a movie.
So, how do you get real consistency? Well, I love breaking stories into logical components, and a classic example is some experimental work I have done recently on time-lapse.
The following is some work to encourage people to read a book. I’ve added just three frames from the 43 frame sequence.
If you look carefully, you will see someone (in this case, my son Chris) turning a book. What a powerful way to tell a story! Every second, a new image fades in over the previous one. You can see him turn the pages! While the output image has been modified in a graphic program, it is so powerful!
You can download the presentation from here...
Categories: animation, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Many times, users just remove an animation and apply another one instead. The need to change an animation may arise for several reasons: You realize that another animation type would work better in a given slide, or you want to make all animations across the entire presentation consistent, or you want to use a more subtle or exciting animation. Whatever your need may be, you need to remove an animation, and then add another one -- PowerPoint's Change animation option makes this a one-click step.
Learn more now...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
As part of the animation tutorials series, I have showed you how you can add an animation to any slide object in PowerPoint. However, there's more to animating text than just adding an animation since PowerPoint provides specialized options for animating paragraphs and bulleted text. In this tutorial we will learn how you can use these special options to animate text sequentially by words, by letters, and by paragraph levels.
Learn more now...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
In PowerPoint you can animate any slide object, but some objects have extra animation options. These objects include charts and bulleted text, and in this tutorial we will work with chart animation in PowerPoint. Since animation is largely unchanged in PowerPoint versions 2002 through 2007, we'll cover all those versions in this tutorial.
Learn more here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, interviews, powerpoint 
Max Wijgergangs is the owner of a Dutch PowerPoint presentation company, Studio-Max. Max admits that he bought his first computer only in 2001, until which time he knew practically nothing about computers and PowerPoint. But he made up for that lost time soon by rapidly discovering all kind of possibilities working with Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe graphics software. This remained a big passion, but it was still a hobby until 4 years later, when he decided to quit his regular job. He launched Studio-Max with a goal to provide the Dutch market with professionally designed PowerPoint presentations. Since then, his energy focused on taking PowerPoint presentations to a higher level that has allowed Studio-Max to become a known name.
Max and his team love to play with the animation possibilities in PowerPoint. In this conversation, Max discusses this and more.
Geetesh: How can animation enhance a regular PowerPoint presentation to something above the ordinary.
Max: Many Dutch clients and companies don't know the full possibilities of PowerPoint, and they are in most cases pleasantly surprised when they see some of our works. "Wow, is this really done by only PowerPoint?' is what we hear a lot from these people. This reaction probably stem from the way we use graphics and animation. When animations are used in the right way, they can really enchance any PowerPoint slide. The secret is to combine different basic animations on pre-calculated timeframes (we use Excel formulas for this!).
When combined with well designed, corporate looking content (Photoshop/Illustrator artwork), this will result in stunning and professional looking animated slides that will blow people away.
We have an in-house PowerPoint professional, Lam Quang Huy working with us at Studio-Max. He is an animation specialist, and he really knows how to take PowerPoint animations to the next level.
There are many secrets hidden in the PowerPoint animation schemes, and we continue to discover new tricks on a regular basis! A lay-person could well imagine that these animations were created using Adobe Flash!
Geetesh: Is there anything called too-much-animation? Tell us more about the dividing line.
Max: Yes there is, I see that almost every day when companies send me their in-house presentations. Content is animated too fast or too slow, pictures are spinning and turning around the screen to vertigo levels, and so on. Too much animation of that sort can distract the audience from the message. Of course, an overkill of animations can also be annoying.
The dividing line in animations can be a distinct difference -- between slides created by a PowerPoint professional or an amateur. Most presentations made in this part of the world demand animations on each slide. It's always a challenge to find the balance between restful and highly dynamic, yet sophisticated animations.
Audiences must not be overwhelmed by all kind of animations but it's also important not to bore them with standard animation stuff they have seen a zillion time before. Being original and creative, that will help a lot!
Categories: animation, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
You need to re-order your animations mainly because you might have more than one animated object on a slide, and you discover that some re-sequencing of animations as they happen in relation to each other may provide a better result. For something of this sort, PowerPoint provides a Re-order option that lets you play with the sequence of the animation.
Learn more now...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Before you start with removing an animation, there is something you need to decide:
Learn more here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
When you add animation to any slide object, and set the animation event for it to occur, the next thing to do is set the speed of the animation. In this tutorial, I explore speed presets in PowerPoint that determine how long an animation takes to complete.
Learn more now...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, photos, powerpoint, presentation_samples, tutorials
Learn how to animate a series of headshots -- very useful for an opening slide sequence. You can also use the same technique for product shots or vacation pictures -- just substitute the headshots!
Learn more now...
Categories: animation, photos, powerpoint, presentation_samples, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples
This sample presentation shows you how you can use motion path animations in PowerPoint on ungrouped vector objects to create a very effective introduction or section slide.
Learn more here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Before you learn to add animation to any slide object, do remember that there are three ways in which your animation can be set to play. These are called animation events. By default, if you don't change anything PowerPoint sets the event to On Click.
Learn more here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, authorstream, powerpoint, tutorials
We took every single motion path animation available in PowerPoint including the preset and custom options -- and created this sample online presentation that you can use as a reference to preview.
Look here...
Categories: animation, authorstream, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, clip_media, powerpoint, templates
AnimationFactory.com is a huge resource of visual content that I have known for a very long time now. Founded in 1996, the site now comprises over 500,000 animations, video backgrounds, PowerPoint templates, backdrops, web graphics, sound clips, Flash source files, etc. They have a dedicated team of on-house artists who create this content. Their media elements can be use in any kind of presentation.
Read the review here...
Categories: animation, clip_media, powerpoint, templates
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
We put up three online presentations that show every animation effect for the entrance, emphasis, and exit animations in PowerPoint. Bookmark these pages as a reference!
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
I explained what animation is, and what guidelines you need to follow before you add an animation to a slide object in PowerPoint. You can add animation to any slide object in PowerPoint -- including text, charts, shapes, pictures, clip art, etc.
Follow these steps to add animation to a shape in PowerPoint.
Learn more here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Now that I have discussed what animation is (and where you should draw the limits as far as animation goes), let me get started showing you how you can work with animation in PowerPoint. All animation in PowerPoint can be divided into four categories.
Learn about animation types in PowerPoint here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
In my continuing series that teaches you PowerPoint, I added this article that is relevant to all versions of PowerPoint -- it's an introduction to animation.
In the simplest sense, animation is something that makes slide objects move on a slide. And slide objects can be anything on a slide, these include text, pictures, charts, SmartArt graphics, shapes, even movie clips.
In this series of learning tutorials, I'll show you how you can add animation -- and then remove, change, reorder, and sequence animation. You'll learn more about the types of animation, and animation speed too.
Learn more here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint
Motion path animations in PowerPoint can illustrate a process, show how a piece of machinery works, or just work with poetic abandon! On this page, we've compiled together all the motion path animation content on this site along with quick tips from the pros.
Read here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint
Labels: add-in, animation, powerpoint
Motion path animations can illustrate a process, show how a piece of machinery works, or just work with poetic abandon! Much of the work involved with motion paths can be painstakingly slow and repetitive. Our review product lets you do these tasks in a click or two, and amazingly enough, this is a free product.
Read a review of Motion Path Tools...
Categories: add-in, animation, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint
You won't have to tackle locking and unlocking motion paths too often but it's good to know more about these options since the way this works is not too intuitive......You really don't need to lock/unlock a motion path from its slide object to move it around. To do that, just select the slide object, then select the actual motion path -- and drag it around as required. This process just moves the motion path, and leaves the slide object in its original place. Confusing? Yes -- it is a little, unless you play around for a few minutes!
Learn here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint
Much of what you can do with motion path animations in PowerPoint relates to what you can do with the motion paths themselves. And the motion paths are essentially just ordinary paths (or lines) that have curves, points, etc. If you are familiar with drawing in PowerPoint - or if you use a graphic illustration program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW, you know that paths can be either open or closed.
A circle is a good example of a closed path, whereas a curve is an open path. So how is the concept of open and closed paths relevant to motion path animations in PowerPoint?
Learn here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint
One of the simplest motion path tricks is using the reverse motion path option. This is very helpful if you want an object to animate using a motion path, and then animate again from the end of the motion path to the beginning!
Learn here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint
I showed you how you can add a basic Motion Path animation to any object on a PowerPoint slide -- now I'll show you how you can use PowerPoint's drawing tools to create your own motion path.
PowerPoint provides 4 types of drawing options for custom Motion Path animations -- learn more here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint
Many PowerPoint users still haven't mastered working with motion path animations -- and I don't blame them for unless you just want to add a preset path, the whole process is not too intuitive. So in the next few days, we'll cover motion paths extensively on the Indezine site through a set of tutorials.
The first tutorial looks at the basics -- how to add a motion path animation in PowerPoint 2007.
Categories: animation, powerpoint
Labels: animation, design, interviews, powerpoint 
Shawn Toh (pictured to the left) is based out of Singapore and loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint. He is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional) and runs the PPT Heaven site.
In this discussion, Shawn discusses the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008.
Geetesh: Tell us more about how you evolved PPTH eCon, and what it is?
Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008 is an annual online convention, which will be held this year on 27 September, a month after the PowerPoint Heaven anniversary date.
The eConvention starts off with the voting of the eCon Awards 2008: Animation / Artwork / Game / Broadcast of the Year, which involves works submitted on the PowerPoint Heaven site in the year 2008. The voting process is a pre-eCon event starting from September 1st to 26th. Winners will then be reflected on 27 September, along with Contributor of the Year, who will be interviewed with a list of questions given by the board members.
Any new PowerPoint works, demos, or trailers can also be submitted during the eCon period by anyone. Also, expect to see screenshots, demo and trailer of a upcoming RPG game in PowerPoint and a sophisticated 3D animations by Han Byul Jang (Zzangdol).
The eConvention was inspired by several of our existing board members, who suggested we have an event where all members on PPTH board can participate.
Geetesh: What is the motivation and objective of PPTH eCon, and who can participate?
Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008 is a day where PowerPointers get together to discuss, review and submit their latest PowerPoint works on PowerPoint Heaven. The purpose of this eConvention is to recognize our contributors for their hard work and efforts for the year and enable them to get together to discuss and keep each other updated on what they have been doing.
For the viewers, this is also a day where you can get to see wide variety of PowerPoint works created by the contributors.
Throughout the eConvention, participation and involvements from the Guests and PPTH board members are welcomed, where the discussion board will be the communication channel for discussions, feedback, suggestions, submissions and more.
Categories: animation, design, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: animation, interviews, powerpoint Shawn Toh (pictured to the left) started creating PowerPoint presentations since secondary school and his interest in PowerPoint animations kept growing. Shawn loves to do advanced animation tricks using PowerPoint.
In this conversation, Shawn discusses animation in PowerPoint and his PowerPoint Heaven site.
Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself and PowerPoint Heaven.
Shawn: I have graduated from the Singapore Polytechnic with a diploma in Business Information Technology with merit and has enrolled into the National University of Singapore. During my free time, I work as a freelance presentation consultant where I do project consultations, conduct workshops, trainings and speaking engagements with companies and schools.
I have been actively participating in the Microsoft Office Discussion Group for PowerPoint (under the alias "tohlz") and has been working closely with Korea's PowerPoint Expert Club.
Geetesh: PowerPoint Heaven is distinctly different from other PowerPoint sites since it looks more at drawing and animation in PowerPoint – what made you choose this direction?
Shawn: PowerPoint Heaven is both an entertainment and educational site that offers you with advanced animations and PowerPoint works. You will be able to find works such as PowerPoint games, artworks, anime, and even web-comics. On this site, the goal is to show users that PowerPoint is not simply a presentation tool, but is also capable on leveraging into other areas such as creating games, artworks and animations comparable to those created in Adobe Flash and Photoshop.
The aim of this site is to create the WOW factor and go beyond the capability of PowerPoint, where visitors entering PowerPoint Heaven will get amazed by the works featured on the site. And through this site, users can get to learn how these advanced works are done by accessing the tutorials section.
PowerPoint Heaven started off as a personal site, where I published my tutorials and works. Being more animation and entertainment focused, PowerPoint Heaven started off with showing works that are unique from other PowerPoint sites and has greatly shown the differences. Thus, the site began receiving more exposure, and has attracted people who are interested in contributing to PowerPoint Heaven.
Categories: animation, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: animation, graphics, interviews, powerpoint Glen Millar (pictured to the right) is a MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for Microsoft PowerPoint. Based near Brisbane, Australia, Glen is a regular on the Microsoft support newsgroups, and a featured speaker at PowerPoint Live. Visit Glen's site, PowerPoint Workbench for tutorials on cool animation effects in PowerPoint.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your work, and your involvement with PowerPoint..
Glen: I first began to use PowerPoint a number of years ago to present scientific information. It was critical that we could communicate effectively, as well as efficiently. I discovered that PowerPoint is a very powerful way to help people communicate. It allowed us to span information across time and locations. That is, we could take our audience to locations and across time in ways that simply cannot be done in real life.
Today, I work in a bunch of areas, including environmental education projects. I particularly build presentations for clients and conduct computer training into the features of PowerPoint that allow clients to build presentations faster and more effectively. I still think it is an awful shame that people spend lots of money on their projects and go to a conference and give a very poor presentation.
Geetesh: Tell us about your false background trick, and how you evolved it. Also what are typical usage scenarios for this trick?
Glen: False backgrounds take advantage of a property of AutoShapes that allows the shape to grab pixels from the slide background and lock them into place. The first time I created a false background was almost by accident. I was preparing for PowerPoint Live in 2004 and wanted to use an AutoShape to pan across the background image of a slide. However, every time I animated the AutoShape to move, it would take the background image with it. I learnt that if I covered the slide background, I could produce some amazing effects such as cropping, highlights and very cool animations. I mainly used the effect to crop multiple parts of an image and apply animations to them.
With the advent of PowerPoint 2007, the effects are even more amazing. When I have shown them to people, they don’t believe I didn’t use an external image editor. For example, a common comment at PowerPoint Live in New Orleans was that people had spent hours in external programs to create image effects that could be done easier and more accurately right within PowerPoint 2007.
I currently use this technique in a number of situations. I mentioned cropping of images. That is, I place an AutoShape over a strategic part of an image on the slide background and the shape drills through the false background in between. This allows a very powerful image crop to occur, but that is only the beginning!
Categories: animation, graphics, interviews, powerpoint
Labels: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples
The PowerPoint Expert Club is among the largest PowerPoint cafes in Korea. Their new Intro Animation Contest requires participants to create a showcase in PowerPoint with the club/cafe as the topic. The main criteria for the winners will be based on PowerPoint animations -- submitted works will be judged through members' voting. The current, top two submissions are now available on PowerPoint Heaven, the site of Microsoft MVP Shawn Toh.
The winning entry for Intro Animation Contest 1 is by Coolguy7, which can be found here...
Categories: animation, powerpoint, presentation_samples
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