Archive for January, 2010

New ATV and Snowmobile Animations

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

On Christmas Eve much of the mid-west was hit by a huge blizzard.  Here in South Dakota we had over 19 inches of snow dumped on us over the next two days.  The street in front of my house turned into a track for snowmobiles.  After we received a request from a kind lady from Illinois for snowmobile and ATV animations, we knew this was the perfect request for a cold day in January.

Animated Snowmobile

Image: Animated Snowmobile

We are happy to introduce a new series of animations based on ATVs and snowmobiles.  These animations were created by our co-owner, Judd Albrecht.  They work great in PowerPoint, but you could also use them on a website, blog, or in your email.

Animated ATV recreational vehicle

Image: Animated ATV recreational vehicle

Enjoy and keep the requests coming.  We do our best to try to fulfill every request we receive.

Add your logo to a PowerPoint template

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

We’ve been getting some questions about how to add your logo to our PowerPoint templates.  Each of our templates has a placeholder for a logo or your company name.  In most cases this is an image placed in the slide master layout.   I thought I would describe how to remove or change the logo placeholder in this post.

Music Sheet PowerPoint Template

Template: Music Sheet PowerPoint Template

For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using PowerPoint 2007.

Step 1

After you have opened up the template in PowerPoint, you will need to locate, under the “View” tab, the “Slide Master” button.

Slide Master View

Slide Master View

Step 2

Simply highlight the logo placeholder and maker your changes.  You can now delete or change the logo to your own.

The Slide Master is pretty much the brain of the PowerPoint template.  All the pre-designed layouts can be found here and edited.  Changes you make in the slide master will affect all the pages in your presentation.  For example if you select the logo placeholder and delete it from the ppt,   it will delete the logo from all the pages in your presentation.  If you replace the placeholder with your own text or logo image, consequently, it will place your logo on all the pages in the presentation.

Note: You will probably need to check through all the layouts available in the Slide Master view since we typically include more than one option for the logo placeholder.

The Slide Master is a best friend for building pages fast, I will talk more about using PowerPoint’s Slide Master in future posts.

Groundhog Day Clipart

Monday, January 11th, 2010
Groundhog with Groundhog day sign

Image: Groundhog Day sign

We’re proud to introduce to you our newest animal mascot,  Gordy Groundhog.  We will be making several new animations and Groundhog Day clipart with him.  In fact, I’d be willing to bet he may turn up as a gopher and a prairie dog too.  Gordy is a pretty versatile rodent.

To be honest, I’m not sure that Gordy is the correct name for our new groundhog.  We might need to change it.  Any suggestions?

Gordy Groundhog

Image: Gordy Groundhop in his hole

New Business Stick Figures Clipart

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

We love to create stick figures.  They are so perfect for illustrating a concept.  Being faceless and genderless, they fit into almost any situation where you need a person to highlight a point.  When you download the transparent PNG versions of these guys, they will fit right into any of your PowerPoint presentations.

If there is a concept we can illustrate for you, just let us know.

PresenterMedia co-owner Josh Doohen, has recently created some new stick figures for us.  Check them out.

Stick Figure doctors carrying patient on gurney

Image: Stick Figure Doctors carry patient on gurney.

Two Stick Figures Push Puzzle Pieces Together

Image: Two Stick Figures Push Puzzle Pieces Together

PNG Images, a PowerPoint Templates Best Friend

Friday, January 8th, 2010

When we launched PresenterMedia, we knew we wanted to provide 3D clipart for use in PowerPoint.  And we knew that the clipart needed to look good no matter what background or template they would be used in.  Enter transparent PNGs.

What’s a Transparent PNG?

A transparent PNG is simply an image that has the ability to make parts of itself transparent. The parts can be completely transparent, or only semi-transparent.  Technically this is called using an alpha channel.

Example of PNG image used in this tutorial.

Example of PNG image used in this tutorial.

As you may have noticed on PresenterMedia, you can control the amount of shadows and reflections you can add to a piece of our Presentation Clipart using our image customizer.  This is especially powerful when you download your images as PNGs.   As a transparent PNG, that image can be used over the top of anything in PowerPoint.  Its background will be transparent and its shadow and reflection will blend perfectly with whatever background or elements you have put behind it.

Transparent PNG in PowerPoint

Example of a transparent PNG being used in PowerPoint