Using Preset Animation Schemes

Animated cartoon illustrators spend weeks creating individual drawings to produce just a couple animated minutes on film. Fortunately, PowerPoint makes it much easier to create effective and professional-looking animations. One way is by using animation schemes, which are predefined animations applied to transitions, titles, and bullets in a PowerPoint slide.

Many slides are bullet slides, and you often need to make one bullet appear at a time; using animation schemes is a quick way to accomplish this. To apply an animation scheme to the text of a slide, follow these steps:

  1. graphics/slide_show.gif Choose Slide Show, Animation Schemes. PowerPoint displays the Slide Design task pane, with Animation Schemes selected. You can instead click the Design button, and then in the task pane, click Animation Schemes (see Figure 11.2).

    Figure 11.2. You use the task pane to work with animation schemes.

    graphics/11fig02.gif

  2. Choose an animation scheme from these categories (you may have to scroll to see all the categories):

    • Recently Used This includes schemes you've just used, so you don't have to search for them each time.

    • No Animation This scheme turns off animation on the slide and is sometimes the best choice.

    • Subtle This scheme involves gentle animations, such as wipes, fades, and dissolves. In most cases these are appropriate and may even be less distracting than no animation at all where slides jump from one to the next.

    • Moderate This scheme helps you get a little more attention, with text that ascends, descends, zooms, or spins in. Generally, however, the effects in this scheme are still relatively subtle.

    • Exciting Although the effects in this scheme offer the most pizzazz, you should reserve these animations for unusual situations, such as a self-running slide show at a trade convention booth. The novelty of these animations wears off quickly.

  3. If the AutoPreview check box is checked, PowerPoint plays the animation once, but you can click the Play button at the bottom of the task pane to repeat the animation.

  4. Click Slide Show to see how the animation works in a real slide show. The preview automatically plays all the transitions, but in the Slide Show view you can see what's automatic and what's not.

  5. If you want to apply the same animation scheme to all the slides in a slide show, click the Apply to All Slides button.

That's easy, isn't it? Try several different animation schemes to see what they do, and you'll soon have a sense of what is meant by subtle and exciting. You'll also soon notice that not everything moves in PowerPoint like you'd like it to. For example, although schemes animate bullets, graphic images automatically appear when the slide appears, and they may not appear in the sequence in which you want to show them.

Caution

graphics/cman.gif

Selecting different animation schemes for each slide in a slide show might seem interesting to you, but it can also be distracting to the audience. Audience members will be wondering how the next slide is animated instead of focusing on what you're trying to tell them.

Glitz can become the spinach-in-the-teeth of an otherwise charming presentation.




Absolute Beginner's Guide to Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
Absolute Beginners Guide to Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
ISBN: 0789729695
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 154
Authors: Read Gilgen

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