The good folks at Brightcarbon have created 7 animated Christmas Cards which you can download, customize and send out on your own. Worth a look!
Here’s my favorite.
Animated PowerPoint Christmas Cards
Categories: Animation, PowerPoint.
Category Archives: Animation
Absolutely Beautiful “Designed by Apple” Video
Visual Metaphors Rock! (Sometimes…)
I LOVE this Slate.com animation of the Republican Iowa Horse Race. Yes, it really comes to life as an actual horse race.
My favorite part was watching Cain come from behind, lead and then die.
SlideShark – The Newest iPad PowerPoint Solution
In the neverending quest for a solid presentation solution for the iPad, the latest contender is SlideShark, an iPad app (with accompanying web management) from the good folks at BrainShark.
Whereas there have been presentation management and display apps for the iPad, such as the very good Presentation Link, SlideShark is the first app to my knowledge that accurately translates existing animated PowerPoint slides for iPad playback.
To use SlideShark, you need to first upload your PPT files to your account on their website where they are converted for use on the iPad. Then, once you have the iPad app installed, you can download your converted presentations and play them through the SlideShark app. On the iPad, you have the option to choose different presentations and to resequence or delete slides within a presentation, even on the fly while presenting.
What’s the catch? No content on your slides can be edited on the iPad as your PPT file has been converted to a proprietary format for playback. Also, slide transitions and certain advanced animations are not currently supported.
If you have a designed PowerPoint file which has necessary animations, then SlideShark is a good solution. If you are not concerned about animations and need to simply show static, non-editable slides, then Presentation Link or my personal favorite solution—JPEGs in the iPad Photo App—is still a good road to go down.
Animating a Movie with Keynote
I recently showed some good examples of movies made with PowerPoint and exported as WMVs (one of the best new features of PPT 2010.)
Well, actually, you’ve been able to do this with Keynote for some time, and Jakob Jochmann just posted a 2 1/2 minute video called “The Fight for Better Communication.” And it was animated completely in Keynote. Take a look.
And Jakob has also graciously posted the source Keynote file on his blog so you can figure out how he did it.
Hardware Graphics Acceleration for Smooth Transitions
Full-screen fades actually use a lot of computing power, and if you don’t have a super powerful machine, you may find animations (and video) acting sluggish: everything from hesitation to start to chunky instead of smooth fades.
There are a number of best practices for presenting such as plugging your computer in, running no other applications and running your presentation from your hard drive as opposed to a network or flash drive. But the simplest “boost” you can give your PowerPoint presentation is to enable “Hardware Graphic Acceleration.”
You can find it under the “Slide Show Tab” under “Set Up Show.” By default this is usually unchecked. In theory, this setting travels with the file, but it can easily get unchecked if you crash or for other unknown reasons.
I would only enable this if you are having performance issues as it sometimes can actually cause complex animations or some video to run worse. That’s Microsoft for you.
Note that there is also a “Hardware Graphics Acceleration” control for Windows itself which needs to be fiddled with in some cases (such as playing video on IBM Thinkpads.) If you need help with these larger performance issues, just email me and I’ll be happy to help where I can.
Categories: Animation, PowerPoint.
Hardware Graphics Acceleration for Smooth Transitions
Full-screen fades actually use a lot of computing power, and if you don’t have a super powerful machine, you may find animations (and video) acting sluggish: everything from hesitation to start to chunky instead of smooth fades.
There are a number of best practices for presenting such as plugging your computer in, running no other applications and running your presentation from your hard drive as opposed to a network or flash drive. But the simplest “boost” you can give your PowerPoint presentation is to enable “Hardware Graphic Acceleration.”
You can find it under the “Slide Show Tab” under “Set Up Show.” By default this is usually unchecked. In theory, this setting travels with the file, but it can easily get unchecked if you crash or for other unknown reasons.
I would only enable this if you are having performance issues as it sometimes can actually cause complex animations or some video to run worse. That’s Microsoft for you.
Note that there is also a “Hardware Graphics Acceleration” control for Windows itself which needs to be fiddled with in some cases (such as playing video on IBM Thinkpads.) If you need help with these larger performance issues, just email me and I’ll be happy to help where I can.
Categories: Animation, PowerPoint.
Slide Transitions
PowerPoint offers over 50 different slide transitions. And I don’t think I’ve ever used 45 of them.
I have one simple rule for using animation:
Animate only if helps tell your story
Sometimes, animating in elements on a slide or moving things around with motion paths actually does help convey your meaning. But a checkerboard transition from slide to slide usually says little more than, “Look at me! Look at me! I found the transition function in PowerPoint!”
If you’re thinking about using the Wagon Wheel transition, I’ve got a rule of thumb: If you don’t see Spielberg or Scorsese using it, don’t use it for your presentation. Actually, I’ll amend that slightly.
While 99% of video, TV and film edits are hard cuts, they have the advantage of sound, music and dialogue to link shots together. For presentations, I prefer simple fades from slide to slide to give a slight sense of movement and to prevent things from feeling like an old-time carousel slide show (“next slide…next slide…next slide…”)
Rarely, I’ll use a push transition as part of a trick for a larger animation effect. Rarely.
The soon to be released PowerPoint 2010 will offer new transitions. Yes, they will be cool (as they attempt to keep up with Appple’s Keynote), but I beg you—practice some restraint…
Categories: Animation, PowerPoint.
Be Like Ken Burns: Zoom and Pan Your Photos
Ken Burns, the documentary film-maker behind The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz and others, knows something about telling a story with images and voiceover. He’s brilliant at presenting information on a screen.
Because many of his films involve subject matter with little or no video footage (and because he never does reenactments), Burns relies heavily on the use of historical still imagery. And to bring this imagery alive, he makes heavy use of a film technique called pan and zoom in which the camera moves closer or farther away from the image and/or moves across the image.
Burns is so associated with this film technique that at one point, Apple actually called it’s automatic pan and zoom feature in iMovie the Ken Burns Effect.
So, what does this have to do with your PowerPoint?
In replacing a series of bullet points with an image, you’ve most likely increased the effectiveness of your message and presentation. But at times, static imagery might start to feel a little…static.
By using PowerPoint’s “Shrink/Grow” and “Motion Path” animation effects (or Keynote’s “Move” & “Scale”), you can be just like Ken Burns and add a sense of movement, depth and drama to your imagery.
Even just a slight pan, zoom in or zoom out can help give a sense of depth and movement to an image. Let’s say you’re talking about NASCAR. A full screen image would be good, but zooming and panning adds a bit of drama.
Keynote allows you to visually size and move your image end state when applying “scale” and “move” which is a very nice feature. In PowerPoint, there’s a little trial and error involved as you’ll have to make some initial guesses when typing in sizing percentages and setting a motion path. If you do want to zoom and pan simultaneously (which you’ll often want to do to focus in on the perfect part of the photo as an end state), you need to set both animations to run simultaneously by setting the second animation to happen “with previous.” Additionally, if using a motion path you’ll want to select “effect options” and deselect “Smooth start” and “Smooth end.” Otherwise, you’ll get a dizzying effect on screen.
I should point out that if you’re zooming in by a large percentage in PowerPoint, your image will start to pixelate no matter how large the image was when you inserted it on your slide. This is because PowerPoint unfortunately “sets” the image prior to the animation. So, if you grow it by 300%, it will become 1/3 as crisp. Depending on the image and the zoom percentage, you may not notice any difference, but you would not want to use this technique to grow a logo by 500%. Zooming out on an image has no effect on quality, and you don’t have to worry about this issue in Keynote. I will point out that there is a somewhat complicated workaround for this image zooming problem. I won’t go into here, but if there are any power presenters who are interested in learning the trick, just email me and I’ll explain it.
Remember that whole “a picture is worth a 1,000 words” thing? Try it next time you’re putting together a presentation. Take the on screen text from a slide like this, and put it into the speaker notes…
Make your image full screen, and then animate it a bit…
Make your image full screen, and then animate it a bit….
If you want to see an example of this effect in action from one of my presentations as well as a couple of ways to tell distinct stories with a photograph and this technique, download this file. And, of course, if you have any questions about this topic or anything related to presentation, just drop me an email anytime at nolan@nolanhaims.
More Uses for Disappear with Previous animations
Footnotes and page numbers are the most most common elements to apply a Disappear With Previous animation, but there are other things on your slides that you might want only to appear in a print deck and not on screen.
Remember, there is just so much text that can be processed and read when presenting on screen.
So, let’s say you have a slide with three bullet points, each with 3 sub bullet points that you may not be specifically talking to when presenting, but that you would like to be in your printed handouts.
Create individual text boxes for each bullet and for each set of sub bullets. Then apply a Disappear With Previous animation to each of the sub bullet boxes. The result is that your audience will only see the large primary bullets on screen and you still have your visible talking points. The less important (and much harder to read) sub bullets in their smaller font size, will only appear in the printed deck.
If you are creative, and if you can lay out your slides appropriately, you can use this technique to keep your on screen show cleaner and easier to read.
What else truly doesn’t need to be viewed in screen?
- Logo bugs?
- Legal disclaimer?
- Copyright notice?
- Sub heading?
- “FPO” notations?
