| PowerPoint's animated effects fall into the nice-to-have category. You can give a perfectly wonderful, effective presentation without using a single animated effect. If you use them sparingly and consistently, though, animation can add polish and visual momentum to your slideshow. PowerPoint has two kinds of effectstransitions from one slide into the next , and animations that affect the text and images on slides: -
Slide transitions control how a slide's contents enter the screen: all at once, a little bit at a time, zooming in from the upper-left corner, fading in gradually, swirling in like a tornado , and so on. -
Custom animations are effects you add to individual objects. For example, bullet points can fly one by one onto (or off of) a slide; your company's logo can sail across the top of a slide; and images can spin, twirl, and dance all over a slide. Because you can animate more than one object on a slide, you can even create additive images, like a map that constructs itself piece by piece (good if you're putting together a report on when each U.S. state was added to the union, or a logistics presentation showing when each of your company's sales territories came online). As appealing as animated effects can be, though, they come with a downside. Overdone, they can make your presentation look amateurish and disorganized. And depending on the effects you choose, they can slow down presentation playback. Used correctly, they can add that last bit of spice that makes a good presentation greatand a great presentation fantastic. FROM THE FIELD
Creating Full-Blown Animations in PowerPoint | | PowerPoint wasn't designed specifically to let you create animationsit's for making slideshows. But because slides have a lot in common with animation frames , and because so many folks have access to PowerPoint through work or school, making animations in PowerPoint makes sense. After all, using something you already have access to and already know how to use is a lot quicker (and cheaper) than finding and installing a copy of a dedicated animation-creation program, like Adobe Flash, and then figuring out how to work it. If you're willing to spend enough time and effort, you can create some pretty impressive animations in PowerPoint. They may not be as sophisticated or as accessible to your audience as what you can build in a dedicated animation tool like Flash), but nine times out of ten, a twirling logo or a click-to-build schematic is all you need. If you're interested in pursuing PowerPoint animation beyond what's in this chapter, check out the tutorials at PowerPoint Heaven: http://pptheaven.mvps.org. |
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