Use Animations to energize your PowerPoint Presentations
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Animations can make your presentations livelier and more interesting, thus grabbing more attentions from your audience and enhancing the impact of the messages that you intend to deliver. The use of animations should be limited and relevant to the messages in your slides. Overusing animations will overwhelm your audience. When that happens, your audience may either (1) overlook the important messages, (2) not able to distinguish which messages are important, or (3) choose to turn off their attentions and stop receiving the messages you want to convey. Therefore, please remember the principal of “less is more” when you use animations in your PowerPoint presentations.
The animations can be applied to text, images, charts, tables, audio, and video components. The Animations Controls are on the “Animations” ribbon and “Animation Pane”. The Animations ribbon provides the choice of the effects, the triggers, the direction of movements, and the sequence. Theoretically, the Animation ribbon can provide all the animation choices that you need. However, it is easier to use with the Animation Pane to visualize the sequence and the timing of the occurrence of the Animation components, especially if you have more than one Animation component in one slide.
Below examples illustrate the use of the animation effects and the Animation Pane to create the interesting animations. You can watch the attached videos to get an idea how the animations are performed. All below examples are based on the attached videos.
Sequence 1: The automobile recycle logo moves left
Step 1: Click the image of the automobile recycle logo and choose the “Lines” effect in Animation.
Step 2: Define the direction of movement by using the “Effect Options, and choose “Left”.
Step 3: Define the “Start:” property. If you want the animation performed automatically, please choose either “On Click” or “With Previous”. If you choose “On Click”, please make sure that you choose the “Advance Slide” to be “After:” certain time in the “Transitions” ribbon. If you don’t do that, the image will not be moved by itself and you need to click it before it starts moving. If you choose “With Previous”, the image will be moved by itself when the slide is loaded.
Example 1
The automobile recycle logo moves left, the video flies down, and the video starts playing.
Sequence 2: The video flies down
Step 1: Insert the video clip.
Step 2: Click the video clip and choose the “Fly In” effect in Animation.
Step 3: Define the direction of movement by using the “Effect Options, and choose “From Top”.
Step 4: Define the “Start:” property by choosing “After Previous”, so the video flies in after the automobile recycle logo has finished moving left.
Sequence 3: The video starts playing
Step 1: Click the video clip and choose “Play” effect in Animation.
Step 2: Define the “Start:” property by choosing “After Previous”, so the video starts playing after the video has finished flying in.
Example 2
The narration starts speaking after the slide is loaded and piles of trash all moving at the same time.
Sequence 1: The narration starts speaking after the slide is loaded.
Step 1: Insert the audio clip for narration.
Step 2: Click the audio clip and choose “Play” effect in Animation.
Step 3: Define the “Start:” property. If you want the animation performed automatically, please choose either “On Click” or “With Previous”. If you choose “On Click”, please make sure that you choose the “Advance Slide” to be “After:” certain time in the If you don’t do that, the audio clip will not be started by itself and you need to click it before it starts broadcasting. If you choose “With Previous”, the audio clip will be broadcasted by itself when the slide is loaded.
Sequence 2: Piles of trash all moving at the same time.
Step 1: Insert the image of pile of trash. In this example, I inserted one image and then copied-and-pasted it five times.
Step 2: Click the images one-by-one by holding down the CTRL key to highlight all the six images.
Step 3: Choose the “Teeter” effect and “Start: with previous”. In this case, the images teeter at the same time when the narration is playing.
Step 4: Choose the “Duration:” which is below the “Start:” property on the Animation ribbon and put in 3 seconds. The Duration command can also be assessed from the Animation Pane. Choose the first picture, then press down the SHIFT key, and click the last picture. All the images will be selected. Then click the dropdown arrow, select the “Timing” option, and put in 3 seconds in the “Duration:” box.
Example 3
Play the background music, make the text “We’ve had a problem !” appear, make the word BIG fade in and enlarge.
Sequence 1: Play the background music
Step 1: Insert the audio clip.
Step 2: Click the audio clip and choose “Play” effect in Animation.
Step 3: Define the “Start:” property. If you want the animation performed automatically, please choose either “On Click” or “With Previous”. If you choose “On Click”, please make sure that you choose the “Advance Slide” to be “After:” certain time in the If you don’t do that, the audio clip will not be started by itself and you need to click it before it starts broadcasting. If you choose “With Previous”, the audio clip will be broadcasted by itself when the slide is loaded.
Step 4: Set the volume to low because it is for background music.
Sequence 2: Make the text “We’ve had a problem !” appear.
Step 1: Click the text and choose the “Zoom” effect.
Step 2: Choose the “With Previous” for the “Start:” property so the text comes up at the same time when the background music starts playing.
Please note that the text does not have the word “BIG” in it. The text was created in 3 rows where the second row was intentionally set as blank to accommodate the “BIG” image.
Sequence 3: Make the word “BIG” fade in.
Step 1: The word “BIG” was first created using the WordArt and made as an image rather than text.
Step 2: Insert the image and choose the “Fade” effect for it.
Step 3: Choose the “After Previous” for the “Start:” property so the text comes up after the text “We’ve had a problem !” appears.
Sequence 4: Make the word “BIG” enlarge.
Step 1: Click the “BIG” image and choose the “Grow/shrink” effect.
Step 2: Choose “Larger” at the “Effect Options”.
Step 3: Choose the “After Previous” for the “Start:” property so the text comes up after the image “BIG” fades in.
