Transcripts
1. Introduction: Good animation can be a wonderful tool to enhance
the clarity of your message. This course contains
six short walk through PowerPoint
animation examples. Each one will provide you
with understanding of a key animation feature
that can be used to take your slide design
to the next level. Some of the default
animations used in PowerPoint can be worse than
having no animation at all. Using animation that
support the content, you can bring your slides to life and engage your audience. We will use the powerful
Morph transition to create a roller counter and create an animated custom charts
using motion paths. I will show you how to create a looping animation and open
it to video and explain how multiple animations on individual letters can create
a sketch style text effect. You will learn to create
your own custom transitions. And we will finish by using
custom motion paths and varied animation speeds to create a natural
looking snowfall. By the end of this course, you'll be able to
apply the skills learned to create animations. You would have
previously thought impossible in PowerPoint.
2. Animated roller counter: In example one, we will be creating this cool roller
counter where you can count up and down to any number using duplicate background fill
and the Morph transition. Firstly, we're going to
jump out into the editor. I'm going to create a new slide, and I'm going to go to
layout and choose blank. The first thing we'll
do is just take this exact text because it's already got
the color that I want to apply to
it and the size. And I'm using Poppins
font at 96 size. And to add the gradient, I went to Format Shape text options and
chose gradient fill. I went from an orange to a
blue at a 45-degree angle. So now I'm just
going to go and get the percent text as well. Just going to paste that in. I'm going to make sure this
is in the right place. And this is in the right place. That's our starting point. The next thing we need
to do is actually put in all the numbers
that we want to count two. We only have to do this once, but once they're in, we can reuse them if necessary. So I'm going to create a copy of this by holding
Control and Shift. Now I'm going to type i1. I'm going to zoom
out to about 40%. I'm just going to keep on doing this until I've got up to 21. Excellent. So now we've got
all our numbers. And the one thing
I need to do here is to select absolutely
all of them. I'm going to de-select
the other text. And I'm just going
to make sure that the vertical
distribution is correct, which is basically the space
between each of the texts. Excellent. I'm now
going to group them. I'm going to zoom
back into my slide. Now. I need to add covers. And the reason I need to do this is so that when the
numbers scroll up, you can't see them fly the page. So first of all, I click a rectangle and I'm
going to put it there. Then this is gonna
be the bottom cover. I'm going to make this
white no outline. Then I'm going to
use Control and Shift to make a copy
of it off the top, aligned it to the top and put it exactly where
it needs to go there. Now, if we view this
slide full-screen, you can see it's got a cover to cover all the texts that
we don't want to see. So now we just have to make sure that this is sent to back. The numbers are sent to back. And then we can see
the faster than last year text over the top. And so this is the
order we want. Now, we'll Control D to
duplicate the slide. Then we go to transitions and make sure morphous selected. And then finally for this one, we want to select the text and move it up to the number
we want to go to. I'm holding down Shift while
I'm doing this to make sure it stays in the
right place horizontally. So I'm gonna go to 20%. Then when I play from this slide and go to the next slide, we've got our roller
counter and you can also go back quite a cool
effect, I think. Now let's look at how we can
add a background to that. So I'm just going to
select both slides. Press Control D. Now, on the first slide, I'm going to right-click
choose Format, background. I'm gonna go to
picture or texture fill, insert stock images. I'm going to type abstract
and select this one, which is the one I
used in the example. So what that's done is it's
made a slide background. And the reason this is so good is it means we can click on these white panels and we can choose slide background
fill for those. And that will give us
a seamless effect. I'm just going to go in
and make this text white. Then I have two options. I can either control D to duplicate this slide
and move it again. Or I can put the slide
background onto these. In this example,
I'm going to create the slide background
again on this one, I'm gonna go to right-click
Format Background. I'm going to choose
picture or texture, fill, insert, stock, abstract, Insert. And then I'm going to click on the top panel slide background and the bottom panel
slide background fill. Then finally, just
select the text, make it white and play. Excellent. There you go. A really easy and simple
and quick way to create a really dynamic motion effects directly inside PowerPoint.
3. Animated graph slider: In example two, I will
show you how to create an animated custom charts using motion paths and
Powerpoint graphics. So the first thing
we're going to do is go to a new slide. We're going to start
with a blank page. And we're gonna
go to our shapes. And we're going to choose
rectangle, rounded corners. And I'll just click
anywhere here. Then we'll drag this
out and make sure that the corners
are wrapped fully rounded by dragging
on the yellow handle. Now we'll right-click
and choose Format Shape. And if we go to this Size
and Properties section here and do the
drop-down for size. We can see the height
and width in here. And I'm going to type 1.28 because that's the
height I want for these, for the width, I'm
going to enter 20. And it's a good idea to do this to something that's rounded
to ten, for example. And I'll show you
why in a minute. So either ten or
20 will be good. Now I'm just going
to send to this and then make it a gray color. I'm going to make shape,
outline, no outline. So there's our first bar. And I'm going to
show you an easy way to make the first color fill. If you click on this
and hold down control and shift and drag, this is gonna be our color, but I'm just going
to separate it to make it easy to
work with for now. I'm just going to fill it
in something like this. Blue will be fine. Now, in this example, I'm gonna be making three
percentages, 704080. As I mentioned before, it's a really good idea to do the width where it's
rounded to a ten, because 70 per cent would be 14, which is easy to work out. I'm now going to hold down
Shift and drag this back up. You'll see the guidelines appear to show you that
it's completely locked on. I'm now going to create a
circle that goes on top. Going to make sure it's
got the same shape fill and the same shape outline. And then I'm going to type 70%. I'm going to make this
Poppins bold and 24. Then I'm going to make
sure that this doesn't wrap by pressing Format Shape. Going to the textbox options and turning off Wrap Text in shape. Excellent, We're getting close. I'm now going to drag
this over the top. You will see that
when I'm halfway up, one of the guidelines
will appear. When I'm right on the halfway point of
the end of the blue, the other guideline appears. So this is exactly
where we want it. Now, we can add the animation and then we'll
create the other parts. So the first animation
we need to do is this blue part will
go to animations. And we'll choose wipe. And then we'll go to effect
options and choose from left. We can adjust the timing after we've moved
this circle here. The first thing we
want to do with this is AB animation line. Then we want to make
it go the correct way. Then we want to choose Reverse Path Direction
from these options. Pretty close. Now we just need to click
on this green triangle, turns into a red dot and
you hold down shift. And we can drag this
to start position. So if we play this, you'll see that
it'll start there. This will wipe up and
then it will move. So we're pretty close. We just need to make a
few tiny adjustments in the animation pane. So firstly, we'll
click on this and say we want it to with
the previous thing. But we also need to add a fade, otherwise it will
appear to start with. So if we go to Add
animation fade, we then want to say the
fade is with previous. And we want to make sure that the effect of
wiping this from left to right is the same as this moving
from left to right. So the time needs to match. We'll drag this down to here. And this here is the motion path to
move it from the left. So now we just have
to get the duration of both of the animations
about the same. I'm going to make the rounded rectangle wiping from left to right a little bit
slower, say 1.5 seconds. And let's see how that looks. Just going to turn off
the smooth end and start. In the effects settings
of the motion path. Really good. Now we're just going to
create the other ones, which we can do by copying
this and making a few changes, which should be a
nice simple way. Now you've done the
complicated stuff. You can reuse this
effect as needed. So I'm going to
create two more bars. One with 41, with
80 per cent on it. So I'm just going to
select everything here. I'm going to press Control
and Shift as I drag it down. This is going to
be my second bar, which is going to
be 40 per cent. And we're going to
make this green. Nice simple color
to make it easy. I'm going to make this screen. We just need to change
the width of this. And we do that as we did
before by clicking on format, shape, size, and position. And now we'll type in
what 40% of 20 would be, which is eight. There we go. Nice and easy to get
an exact position. And now we'll hold down
shift as we drag this. And you can see
that the guide will come up in the right place. Excellent. Now we need to make this happen a little bit quicker
because it's only going up to 40 per cent in comparison with 70 per cent. So I'm going to click on this. I'm gonna go to animations. And I'm going to make sure
that this is on 1 second. And the motion path, I think about 0.75 might do. So. We now just have to drag the start point of
the motion path. And we'll hit play. Excellent. Just the final one to go. So select all of them. Shifting control again. This one's going
to be 80 per cent. Just set it to a
different color. As before, we'll
click Format, Shape, and choose the width, which for 80% would be 16 centimeters. Then we'll drag this
and hold Shift. It will snap at the
right position. This because it's a
slightly higher number, would need a slightly longer
time in the animation. So again, we'll go to
Animations, Animation Pane. And I'm going to choose
1.75 for the duration here, and 1.5 for the duration
on the motion path. One final thing to do there, we just need to drag the beginning position
of the motion path. Right over to this side. There we go, 7040, 80% per cent. Some really great looking
animated graph sliders that you can use in
any presentation. And we've done the
complicated work. And if you ever
need to use these, you can just copy them out
from the first version you did and easily change the
colors and the numbers.
4. Animated looping light : In example three, we will use
PowerPoint lines to create a circular looping light
animation over multiple slides, and I'll put it to video. The first thing
we're going to do is start on a blank slide. I have my three colors that I'm going to use
for this animation. I'm just going to bring them
into my blank slide and put them slightly off the slide just so that I can use
them for reference. And the first thing we're
going to do is draw the lines. So click line,
click to reveal it. Make sure it's straight. I'm going to right-click on
it and choose Format Shape. Now I'm going to make sure that the line is five-point wide. And I'm also going to
make it ten centimeters. I'm now going to align
it to the center. I'm going to go to
the eyedropper tool and choose the
color that I want. So for the lines
that aren't lit up, it's going to be
this dark red color. Now we're going to
duplicate and rotate. So I'll press Control D, and I'll firstly rotate
it by 90 degrees. Again, align it to the
middle, Control D again. And I'm going to rotate this by 45 degrees and align
it to the middle. And then Control D on this one. I'm going to rotate this
by minus 45 degrees. Now finally align
this to the middle, and this is the first part of our shape for this animation. I'm now going to
select them all. Control G to group, Control, D to duplicate. I'm going to align
this to the middle, which is over the
top at the moment. Then I'm going to
hold down Shift, which actually
locks the rotation into 15 degree increments. I'm going to Control
D again and again, hold down Shift to lock the rotation into 15
degree increments. So this is the first
part of our shape. I'll right-click, choose Format, Background, solid fill, and eyedropper on
the purple shape. I'm now going to click on oval. I'm not going to make sure
this is also the purple shape. And make sure it has no outline. And this is going to
be eight centimeters. We're going to align
this to the center. There we've made the
base of this graphic. Now we're going to make
that lit up sections. Firstly, I'll select everything except the circle on the top, which I'll do shift
click to deselect. I'm going to press Group. And I'm going to duplicate. Again. I'm going to align
it to the middle. Now, I'm gonna make this
bright color eye dropper. And the bright orange. We will need to get the purple
circle back to the front. But before we do that, I'm just going to change
some of these lines to give it the effect of the animating lights
that we showed earlier. So I'm going to click
once and then click a second time to select
the line inside the group. And then I'm going
to put this on five per cent transparency. I'm going to put this
one on 10% transparency. I'm going to put
this one on 2030. Just carry on going until
I get to the bottom. 405060708090 and then 95. Now we're going to send this to the back by right-clicking
center back. Then finally, we're going
to send this to back. This should give us the
exact layer order we need. So we can delete my
color references as we don't need them anymore. We can delete the
slide I came from. And this is gonna be the
first slide now animation. And when I press Control D, Go to slide two. We're now going to click
on this lit up section. And again, the magic
part hold down Shift so it rotates
by 15 degrees. We do need to make sure that
transition is very quick. Whoa, I'm gonna give this
something like naught point, naught one, and then make
sure that after is selected. So after the duration
of naught point, naught one, it will
go to the next slide. Just going to zoom up the slides so you can see
what we're dealing with here. Press Control D again. Rotate by holding
down the Shift key. Very important. Control D again. Rotate. Controlled a very tight. Just keep going until
we get right to the n, which will be 13 slides. So now when we play
it from the start, will get one cycle
of the animation. And then I'll show
you how you can live with that. Looking good. So now we go to slideshow. We go setup slideshow, and we choose Loop
continuously until escape. An okay. We just want
to make sure that the very first slide
there has got the after box texts and that it's down
to naught point naught one. So that will match
all the other slides. So now when we click play, excellent, the looping lit up circular animation looking good. Finally, there's a little bonus. Just show you how you can
easily export this to a video. So we can go to file, we can go to Export. We can go to create a video. Then we can choose
the resolution. Anything over ten
ATP would be good. So either ATP or four K, then you can say Create Video. I can just go to my desktop
and call it loading loop animation, start, Save. And now that's created
an MP4 file that we can use easily and set up the
loop in any presentation. So hope you enjoyed the video. I think it's a great way of learning these little
tips and tricks. So you can make your own great looking animations
in PowerPoint.
5. Animated custom transitions: Positions using inbuilt
animations and PowerPoint shapes. We'll start with a new
blank presentation. Go to New Blank. Right-click layout. Blank. I'm just going to paste in the colors that
I'm going to use. The first custom
slide transition, we're gonna be using
the spin animation with two different shapes. Will firstly set the color of the background by
right-clicking, choosing Format
Background, solid fill. I'm going to use the eyedropper to pick this purple shape here. Great. Now we're going to
add the two shapes. The first one will
be a big rectangle. We're going to
click on rectangle. Click anywhere on the page. Again, I'm going
to pick the color. So I'm gonna go to the
eyedropper and choose this. I'm going to make sure
it has no outline. Now I'm going to go to
the Size and Properties. Click to reveal the size. And I'm going to set this to 60 centimeters high by
a 100 centimeters wide. So it's going to be pretty big, but it needs to be big enough
to rotate across the page. I'm just going to
zoom out slightly. Put this below my slide. There should be good. Then I'm going to
go to animations. I'm going to choose
spin which is here. Then I'm gonna go
to animation pane. Double-click on this. You can see that it defaults
to 360 degrees clockwise. But we want a core to spin
or 90 degrees clockwise. And we also want a smooth end. So I'll just drag
this all the way up. That's looking good. Just wanted to take
it down to 1 second. And then we'll preview this. Pretty good. You can just say it needs to be a tiny bit bigger. So one way of doing that is
to hold Control and Shift. You can see the shape expands as you drag
it from the corner. And again, we'll just pull
this down slightly below. Shift F5 to preview. Perfect. Now we'll add the
other shape. For this. We're going to use a triangle. I'll hold down
shift to expand it. Now, I'm going to pick
the color and I'm going to use this
light blue color here. And I'm going to turn
off the outline. So no outline. I'm going to click on
this little yellow dot and drag this over. Now, I've got the
triangle that I want, and I'm just going to rotate it just so that it's
flat on the screen. And then going to go to Format, Shape and make sure
it's big enough. I want about 93 centimeters
wide. It's looking good. I'm just going to drag
this to the bottom again. For this animation, I'm
going to use spin again. I'm going to get it to
spin the other way. So if we go to animation pane, Double-click on the triangle. Choose Core to spin. But we'll also want to
choose counterclockwise, so it spins the other way. We'll drag smooth end up again. Looking pretty good there. We just take it down to 1 second and we'll set
start to be with previous. So it happens at the same time. Let's play that. Excellent. Just the effect I'm looking for. I'm now going to
zoom in slightly and paste in the text
that I had earlier. Show what we're doing, a
custom slide transition using a spin animation. Let's see how that looks. Great. In this example. I think I want the triangle
to be very slightly bigger. So I'll do the same thing again. Hold the corner, press
Control Shift and drag. Excellent. There's the first
custom slide transition. Now let's look at
transition number two. So we'll right-click new
slide. So you minimize it. Paste our colors that
we're going to use. And now Format Background. Eyedropper, which
is this purple. In this custom
transition example, I'm gonna be using a grow
animation on a circle. So I'm going to
click on the circle, going to go to
color, eye dropper. Click this pink. Now I'm
going to size this up. I think I want it
about 35 centimeters. To zoom out a bit. Put this off the
side of the page. Make sure it's got no outline. And now we can add
the animation, will go to animations. We'll click on our circle. Click Add animation. And we'll choose
grow, slash, shrink. Us pretty close to
ready. So what we want, we'll just double-click on this circle in the
animation pane. I'm going to change
the size to 200%. You must press Enter here, otherwise it won't save it. Then I'm going to
drag up the end, make it as smooth and
as usual. Pretty close. Just think we want a
little bit quicker. So I'm going to click
duration down to 1 second. Now, I'm going to play this. Great. So I'll just paste in the text. Play. That's great. So that is the custom
slide transition using the Grow Shrink animation. The final example,
we're gonna be using a zoom
animation as before, we'll right-click,
choose new slide. I'll paste in the colors
I'm going to be using. Right-click Format Background. I'm going to choose
the blue color, eyedropper, pick the blue. And now I'm going to
create two circles that I'm going to use my
Zoom animation transition. So as before, click
on the circle, I'm going to choose the color eye dropper and this light blue. Again, make sure
it's got no outline. And I want this to be quite big. I think about 41
centimeters should do. Then I'm going to align it. Align Middle, Align Center. That is now in the right place. To do the Zoom
animation will go to animations and you can either choose Zoom
if it's in there, we can go to Add animation
and choose Zoom from here. So that's my first circle. I can now click on the circle, press Control D to duplicate it. Go to my color, choose
the second color, which is this purple. Align it back in the
middle and center. Because I've duplicated it, it will already
have the Zoom on. But the one thing
we will need to do is go to the animation pane. Sure, it starts
with previous and put on a slight delay about a quarter of
a second will do. That will give us the
effect we're looking for. We'll just play from there. Excellent, looks, really good. So I'll just paste in my text. Play that. There we go. That's great. So three different ways of using animation to make your own
custom slide transitions. And you can try out
any of these using different shapes,
different animations, and break out of the
traditional transitions in PowerPoint and create
your own unique style.
6. Animated wiggly text: In example five, we will
be creating an organic, unique text effect of
animated wobbly texts in a sketch style using multiple animations that
repeat on individual letters. The first thing we'll
do is go file new, blank, presentation,
layout blank. The first thing I'm
going to do is paste in my background slides
that I've made earlier. These are just gradients. I'll show you how I set them up. Format Background, linear
gradient, Two 125 degrees. I've just picked two
nice colors to go from. If you wish to use
these to start with, I'll put a link down in the description
below where you can download the gradients
PowerPoint file. So the first thing we need to do is create the
first text item. And I'm gonna be using
the font, ma'am, solver. Not gonna make it white. And I'm gonna make it 66 size. This is a Google font. And again, I'll put
the link down below in the description for you to go straight to download it
if you wish to use it. Hand-drawn fonts work
best for this style. And I think this is a
nice font to use for it. I'm now going to
Control D to duplicate, type whatever I want into this. And then move and rotate
as I feel is good, which is quite arbitrary. But whatever you
think looks good. Because ultimately it's just meant to look like
it's sketched out. So now we've got
our basic words. I'm just going to add the animation to create
the wiggly effect. And we can do this with
two different animations. So we'll click on the M. And we'll add the first animation, which will be a teeter. Clicks go into the Animation
Pane and double-click. We need to do a couple
of things in here. We need to go to timing. I like to choose
very fast and then repeat will choose
until end of slide. So that's the first effect
we're going to use. We're also going to
add one more animation to that. So we'll click again. And to add an animation, it's important to press
the Add Animation button because otherwise it will replace the Theta with
whatever you choose. We're going to add Spin, which initially goes 360 degrees around and looks a bit odd on
this particular animation. So I'll double-click on
it, which is custom. We'll choose a
couple of degrees. So say two will be
fine for this and it's important to press
Enter, so it saves it. The next thing we want to
do is click auto reverse. Then again, we'll go
into timing and we'll choose Repeat until
end of slide. That's just going to carry on going until we go
to the next slide. The auto reverse means
it's going to rotate two degrees clockwise and then back to degrees anticlockwise. We need to make
this a lot faster. It defaults to two seconds. I'm going to put it onto
nought 0.25 seconds. And then start. I'm going to choose
with previous. Everything on this
will be with previous, so it will all happen
at the same time. And we just need
to make sure that the first animation happens with previous as well. Looking good. We're just going to add
some similar animation to the other characters. And it won't be exactly the same because it will
look too similar. We want it to have a nice kind of random effect
to make it look good. On the y. I'm going to select Custom
three degrees on this one, press enter auto reverse. Going to take the time down
to something like nought 0.5. And I'm also going to put slight bounce and on it
doesn't matter how much it is. And then start with previous. That just needs to
be a bit faster. So I'll put it down
to nought 0.25. We also need to turn
on the repeat until end of slide. Okay? I'm going gonna make
that a bit faster. Something like nought 0.1. Oh great. We'll just add something
similar to the other letters. And then to make
the next slides, we're just going to copy and
make a few small changes to save us having to do
all the animation again. So to add the
animation to the S. We could just click on the M, click the animation painter, and then click on the S. Now I'm just going to make a
couple of changes to it. Just for variation, I can
select counterclockwise. I can type in four
degrees and press Enter. Then maybe a smooth end or anything you choose is just
to make it quite random. So that's looking pretty good. We're just preview that. And if we double-click
the animation painter, we can apply it to all of
these by clicking on each one. And now we can just go in, go into the spin,
add some variation. So this one, we might have a
two-degree clockwise spin. A bit of bounce end. On the O. We might have five degrees counterclockwise
with a smooth start, six degrees on the r. And finally the y on
this particular page. Just going to put at one degree press Shift
F5 to preview that. Looking good. So let's create the other
slides very quickly by copying these and making
some very small adjustments. So I'm going to press
Control a, selects them all. Control C, go into my
other slide and Control V. Now going to quickly type in the new letters and
move them as I go. And to create some variation, you can move them and
rotate them slightly. You can also go in and
adjust the animation if you feel you want to
create some more randomness. Looking good. We're just put in the next
three slides to finish off. Remember, Control a
to select them all. Control C, gone to
the next slide, and Control V. On this one, we need two other characters. I'm going to select them
randomly from different places. So I'll select this
one, this one. Then press Control D
and drag them across. And again, you can add a bit of variation, bit of rotation. And we'll just roughly
align these to the middle. Again, it doesn't
have to be exact. You can group these
and align them. Because if you group them, it will lose all the animation. But a little trick
when you want to align a lot of things that are individual and have animation. I can just draw a rectangle
that is the right size over these and align
it to the middle. And Send to Back. You can see exactly
where the middle is now. You can select them all and put them in exactly in the
middle if you wish. Now, delete the rectangle. So that's a quick way of aligning multiple
things to middle. If they've already got
animation on individually, would just quickly put the text into the last
couple of slides. That's great. We've just finally add the
line that underlines these. And for this, we
can choose a curve. I'll just roughly draw it in. We'll click on it, Format, Shape, change it to white, make it as thick as we want. It's probably about
5. I can also change the sketch style
freehand for this. Then I'll go to Animations. Choose wipe, effect
options, choose from left. Think I want it to have
round ends as well to match the text. So I can choose Cap Type. You have three options in
here and I'll choose round that puts it round at the
end rather than squared. And then again, we'll add a
tiny bit of movement to it. So we'll go to Add animation. Spin. Probably about a one
degree will be good. Go to the animation
pane, Double-click. Go to custom, one degree, press Enter, auto reverse. We want to make sure
that it's pretty quick. So I'm going to put this
down to nought 0.25. Then Shift-click to select both of these and
choose with previous. Now everything will happen at the same time in this slide. The one thing we
just need to add two here is to go to timing and
repeat until end of slide. Excellent. So we're just play
from the start. So there we've got our wiggly
text in a cartoon style, and it just breaks out of
the traditional PowerPoint and gives you an
understanding of what you can do with a rather
limited amount of built-in effects
in PowerPoint. If you tweak them and adjust them to get the look
that you're going for.
7. Animated snow fall: In example six, you will see how using custom motion path and varied animation speeds can create a natural looking
snowfall effect. The first thing
we're going to do, it's going to go to found
new blank presentation, layout, blank and ask
the snow will be white. Initially, the easiest way of working with it is
just a right-click. Choose Format,
Background, and pick a solid fill that
something like a mid gray, just so we can see what
we're working with. Now, let's create the snow. So we'll start with an oval and we'll just click
to reveal it here. I want the size to be about
point a to the first one. This is gonna be
my biggest snow. Then I'm gonna go to Shape Fill. Choose white, and
choose no outline. We'll go to effects soft edges and then make sure this is on
about 5 should do. That's going to create
a nice snow effect. And so I think the
simplest way of animating this is to animate the first one and then make a few tweaks and change
the size of the snow. The other bits of snow
that are going to fall. Then I'm going to show you
a great tip for how to make it keep looping and
keep looking realistic. We're going to start
with it near the top and I'll move attacked
when I eventually finish, but start with it
here for ease of use, will go to animations. We're going to use
a motion path. That's a custom path, which means you can draw it
in about four or five clicks. And that's our custom path. You can see the snows
start to fall there. So when we play
this as one thing, you'll notice straight away. It doesn't like it's
falling very naturally because the edges are so
sharp of the animation. So we can right-click on
this and choose Edit Points. Then if you right-click
on one of the points, you can choose smooth point. And we're going to apply
this to all of the points. So now when we
clicked to adjust, we can make certain bits longer. We can move them about
by dragging them. We can change the curve by using these
corner handles here. I'm going to click off
the whole thing to move the actual animation up. The snow up, because it will be starting at the
top of the page. And I want it to ideally finish near the
bottom of the page. When I play this, it's going to look a little
more realistic. The next thing we need to
do is slow it right down. And for these, I'd
imagine somewhere between 1020 seconds for most of the snowfall will
look pretty good. So I can change the
duration of this. I'll set this to ten seconds
and then play it from there. Starting to look pretty good. I'm just going to
squash this end. Moves less to the
left and right. I'm just picking up the
handles to do this. If you ever want to get rid
of any of these points, you can either
right-click on them and choose Delete Point, or you can hold down
the Control key, click on them and that
will delete them. What we're going to
do is when we create the others will create
a little variation. But I think this one is
good enough to go now. So here's our first
falling snow. Now we can click on this, press Duplicate
and then drag it. It will have the path with it. We're gonna go to the
size of the snow. And this will be a
smaller piece of snow. So you might do it at 0.6. And I'm also going
to click on it and pull it a little bit higher. Then we'll edit the path. Just so it looks slightly
different as it falls. Which when we copy
a lot of them, will make a big
difference, especially as we change the speed as well. You could just randomly
drag bits of this, but just don't make it too drastic, otherwise
it will look odd. So now there'll be two
bits of snow falling. And if we go to the
Animation Pane, we want to make sure that these all will happen with previous. So that will happen together. And if we click on
the second one and change the duration
to 20 seconds, it will fall a lot slower. So just preview that. What we wanted to do now is when it hits what's going to be the
ground near the bottom. We want it to evaporate effectively disappear,
and start again. This will create quite
unnatural looking rotation of the snow because everything will be staggered when we
do this separate going to double-click on the first
oval and the animation pane. And then we'll go to
timing and make sure that repeat is until end of slide. And we'll apply that to
the second oval as well. Timing, repeat end of slide. So now when we play the
first one hits the bottom, it'll disappear
and replay again. It's looking good already. So I'm going to duplicate a few. I'm going to change
the duration, probably making them between
a few and 20 seconds. And then we'll make a
few edits to the path. And then we'll have something
looking pretty good. Then we'll add our backgrounded. So Control D to
duplicate one of these. I'm just going to make
it a different size. Say no 0.7 on this one. Just going to click on the
path and hit Edit Points. So you right-click on the path. Edit points. This will allow me to make something that looks
different to the other two. Again, doesn't matter too much, as long as it's
nothing too drastic. Just zoom out a tiny bit. Will probably want about 15 of these will
probably look good. So I'm just swiping over
them and selecting them and pressing Duplicate to copy
them into different places. Some will be higher,
some will be lower. Just creates a random
snowfall effect. As long as the start
position of all of them is slightly higher than
the top of the screen. All should be good. Now I think I've probably
got enough of them. Just going to click
on a couple of these points to
change the direction. Again, right-click Edit Points and you can just change
the direction there. Now if we play, they'll look pretty good. But all the times will either be ten or 20 seconds because that's how we
did the first two. See they fall to uniformly. So all we need to do
is go in and make sure they all fall
at different time. Once we've got that
will be nearly there. So I'm just going to
randomly put these on anytime starting at
about eight seconds. An ending that's
about 20 seconds, that'll be the highest point. Doesn't really matter
what any of these are on. Ideally, they should all be
a slightly different time. So let's see how that
looks. Pretty good. So we'll just get
the background in. Right-click on the background. Choose Format, Background,
picture or texture, fill. Insert stock images.
Type in snow. There's the background I
chose for this example. I think it looks really good. And then let's preview that. Excellent. There we go. A nice-looking non-uniform snow falling affects
directly in PowerPoint. And there was a
couple of really good principles that we
took from that. One of them being that you can right-click on motion path, smooth it, or add or remove points to customize
it just as you want. The other is that you
can go into timing on the effect and repeat
until end of slide. And the fact that I made these all different times means that the way they rotate
and keep looping, it keeps it looking interesting and nothing's too uniform. So I really liked this effect.
Alan Lomer, POWERPOINT DESIGNER AND TEACHER
