Archive for the ‘Animations’ Category

Animated GIFs in Mac PowerPoint 2008

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Animated .GIFs are a quick and easy way to add a bit of life to a PowerPoint slide.  Plus they are so easy to use. Simply insert them as a picture and they will animate when you view the slide show.

Animated Figure with wrench

Animated GIFs work great in PowerPoint for Mac

This is all great unless you’ve been running PowerPoint 2008 for Mac.  The original version of PowerPoint 2008 didn’t have good support for the venerable animated GIF format.  But Microsoft has come to the rescue with an update to PowerPoint 2008.   The update is called the Office 2008 Service Pack 2 and it was released in July of 2009.

This free update fixes various issues and adds complete support for animated .GIFs.  If you’ve been updating your software all along, you likely are already running this patch.  But if you are experiencing difficulties with our animated gif animations in Mac PowerPoint 2008, it’s likely that you need to update your software.

Animated figure walking with tool box.

Update PowerPoint 2008 to use animated gifs.

Here is a link to the Office 2008 Service Pack 2 for Mac.  You’ll want to browse for downloads at the bottom of the page to find the appropriate download.

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New Animations for PowerPoint

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

We’ve recently been taking some of our most popular 3D figures for PowerPoint and converting them into PowerPoint animations.  The animations below are set on infinite loop, but with our new loop feature in the Animation Customizer you can change the number of time an animation loops before it stops.

Animated 3D Stick figure with red target

Stick Figure Animation for PowerPoint

Animated 3D person reading a book

Stick Figure reading a book

These new animations are animated .GIF files but they can also be downloaded as Flash (.SWF).  They can be downloaded with a white background or with a transparent or clear background.  Also you can customize the background color of the animation using the customizer.  Customizing the color allows you to seamlessly match the animation to your presentation background.

Animated Businessman winning a race

A businessman finishes the race first in this animated clip art

Animated figure breaking through wall with hammer

Animated 3D figure uses a sledge hammer to break through a brick wall

These PowerPoint animations were created by Judd Albrecht and Josh Doohen, co-owners and artists here at PresenterMedia.  As we are the artists that create all the content on PresenterMedia, please feel free to let us know what you’d like to see on the site.  In most cases we are happy to create your suggestions and add them to the site for all our subscribers to benefit from.

View all our animations for PowerPoint here.

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Set the number of loops of an animation

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Adding an animated .GIF to a PowerPoint presentation can be an easy way to call attention to a point or to add a bit of life to a slide.  But animated .GIFs should be used with caution.  Nobody wants to view a slide with to many distractions.

Typically an animated GIF is set to loop over and over again forever and ever.  After a while this can get distracting for your audience if you spend any amount of time on a slide.  Wouldn’t it be great if the animation would just stop after a few moments?

With this in mind, we’ve added an new feature to our custom animation (GIF) creator in our animations section.  You can now set the number of times our animations loop before they stop.

Control the number of loops in an animated gif

Control the number of loops in an animated .GIF

By clicking the Number of Loops area in the customizer, you can set the animation to loop one to six times or choose to let if repeat indefinitely.

I particularly like choosing one or two loops for animations in my presentations as this give just enough time to spark the slide without becoming a distraction to my message.

For now, the set number of loops only works with .GIF images created with our customizer.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

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Posted in Animations, Tutorials | 3 Comments »