Animations and Slide Transitions – Presentation (Senior 3 ICT) | Ganzaa

Presentation

Lessons

Senior 3 · ICT

Presentation

5 lessons

Lesson 4 of 5

Animations and Slide Transitions

45 min

Movement with a purpose

Two pupils presented the same topic, the parts of a computer. In the first talk every bullet point spun in with a whoosh, and every slide exploded into the next. The class laughed at the effects and remembered nothing else. In the second, the speaker showed an empty computer case, then added each part to the diagram as she named it: processor, memory, storage. The movement followed her explanation.

PowerPoint has two kinds of movement. A transition is how one slide replaces another; an animation is how an object on a slide appears, changes, moves or leaves.

Definition

Slide transition: the visual effect when the slide show moves from one slide to the next, such as Fade or Push.

Animation: an effect applied to one object on a slide. There are four kinds: Entrance (the object appears), Emphasis (it changes while on the slide), Exit (it leaves) and Motion Path (it moves along a line).

Animation Pane: a list of every animation on a slide, in the order they play, with their timing.

Adding a transition

Select the slide (or several slides in the Slides pane).
On the Transitions tab, click an effect in the gallery. The groups are Subtle (such as Fade, Push, Wipe, Morph), Exciting and Dynamic Content. PowerPoint previews it.
Effect Options sets the direction or style, for example Push From Right.
In the Timing group, set the Duration (how long the effect lasts, in seconds) and, if you want, a Sound.
Under Advance Slide, keep On Mouse Click for a talk; tick After and type a time (for example 00:08.00) for a show that runs by itself.
Apply To All gives every slide the same transition. A star beside a thumbnail shows that the slide has a transition or animation.

To remove a transition, choose None in the gallery.

Adding animations

Click the object (a text placeholder, picture, shape, chart or SmartArt).
On the Animations tab, choose an effect. The icons are colour-coded: green for Entrance, yellow for Emphasis, red for Exit, and lines for Motion Paths. More Entrance Effects… at the bottom of the gallery shows the full list.
Effect Options: direction, and for text As One Object, All at Once or By Paragraph (one bullet per click). For SmartArt: One by One.
Set the Start option, Duration and Delay in the Timing group.
To give the same object a second effect (for example an entrance and then an emphasis), use Add Animation, not the gallery: choosing from the gallery would replace the first effect.
Animation Painter copies one object's animations to another; Preview plays the slide's animations.

Start option	The animation plays …
On Click	when the presenter clicks (or presses the space bar or →)
With Previous	at the same moment as the animation before it in the list
After Previous	as soon as the animation before it in the list has finished

The Animation Pane

Animations → Animation Pane lists the effects in playing order. Small numbers on the slide match the click numbers in the pane. Drag an item, or use the up and down arrows, to change the order; click the arrow beside an item for Effect Options and Timing.

Mock-up drawn by Ganzaa. The green bars show when each entrance effect plays after the first click; the dashed line is the delay.

Worked example 1: reading the timeline

In the pane above, after click 1:

The title flies in from 0 to 0.5 s (On Click, duration 0.5 s).
The picture fades in With Previous, so it also starts at 0 s; its duration is 1.0 s, so it ends at 1.0 s.
The text box is After Previous: it waits for the item before it in the list (the picture) to finish at 1.0 s, then waits its delay of 0.5 s. It wipes in from 1.5 s to 2.0 s.

Everything on click 1 is finished after $1.0 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 2.0$ s. Click 2 makes the picture pulse (an emphasis effect). The slide therefore needs 2 clicks before the next click moves to the next slide.

Worked example 2: building a diagram as you speak

The speaker wants the five handwashing steps (the SmartArt of Lesson 2) to appear one at a time.

Click the SmartArt. Animations → Wipe.
Effect Options: Direction From Left; Sequence One by One.
Start: On Click; Duration 0.5 s.

Now each click reveals the next step, five clicks in all, and the audience reads only the step the speaker is describing. For a self-running show at the open day, she sets the Start to After Previous with a delay of 2 s, so the steps appear by themselves.

Warning

Use movement with care

One transition style for the whole talk, short and subtle (Fade or Push, about 0.5–1 s). Save something special for one key moment, if at all.
Animate only what helps: revealing points one by one, or building a diagram. Spinning, bouncing and sound effects distract.
Practise the clicks. Too many On Click animations leave a speaker clicking without knowing what comes next.
Exports lose movement: a PDF or a printed handout shows each slide in its finished state, with no animations.
Some people feel ill or distracted with fast-moving effects. Keep motion gentle.

GCFLearnFree (LearnFree): animating text and objects in PowerPoint: entrance, emphasis, exit and motion path effects, effect options, the Animation Pane and timing.

✦

Hands-on: animate your club presentation

Open Club_Report_YourName.pptx. Select all slides and apply the Fade transition, duration 0.75 s, with Apply To All.
On the “What we learned” slide, give the bullet list a Wipe entrance, By Paragraph, On Click.
On the SmartArt slide, make the boxes appear One by One.
On the chart slide, make the chart appear By Series or By Category (Effect Options), so each set of columns appears in turn.
On the last slide, give the “Join us!” WordArt a Zoom entrance After Previous, then use Add Animation to add a Pulse emphasis After Previous.
Open the Animation Pane on each slide and count the clicks. Write the total number of clicks needed for the whole talk.
Play the show (F5) and present it to a partner. Ask them: did any effect distract? Remove it.

Practice

Define a slide transition and an animation.
Name the four kinds of animation effect and the colour of the icon for three of them.
Write the steps to give every slide the Push transition, lasting 1 second.
Explain the difference between On Click, With Previous and After Previous.
Why should a second effect on the same object be added with Add Animation and not chosen from the gallery?
A picture is set to Fade, With Previous, duration 2 s, behind a title that flies in On Click with duration 1 s. A caption is set to After Previous with delay 1 s and duration 0.5 s, and is listed after the picture. When does the caption finish, counted from the click?
A self-running show has 15 slides, each set to advance after 6 s, with a 1 s transition on every slide. Estimate how long one run of the show lasts.
Evaluate this plan for a 5-minute science talk: a different transition on every slide, each with a sound, and every line of text spinning in.

Show answersHide answers

Transition: the effect when one slide replaces the next in a slide show. Animation: an effect applied to one object on a slide (appearing, changing, moving or leaving).
Entrance (green), Emphasis (yellow), Exit (red), Motion Path (shown as lines).
Select any slide → Transitions → Push → Duration 01.00 → Apply To All.
On Click waits for the presenter's click; With Previous starts at the same time as the animation before it; After Previous starts when the animation before it has finished.
Choosing from the gallery replaces the object's existing effect; Add Animation keeps it and adds the new one after it.
The picture starts with the title at 0 s and ends at 2 s; the caption waits for it, then 1 s delay, so it starts at 3 s and finishes at 3.5 s.
About $15 \times (6 + 1) = 105$ s, roughly 1 minute 45 seconds.
A poor plan. Different transitions and sounds on every slide distract the audience from the science and make the talk look unprofessional; spinning text is slow to read and wastes the short time. Better: one subtle transition for all slides, no sounds, and animation only to reveal points one at a time or to build a diagram as it is explained.

Sources and credits

Steps checked against Animate text or objects, Microsoft Support (facts only).
Video: PowerPoint: Animating Text and Objects, GCFLearnFree (LearnFree), embedded from YouTube.
The mock-up, start-option table, worked examples, hands-on task and practice items were written by Ganzaa.

1Movement with a purpose

2Adding a transition

3Adding animations

4The Animation Pane

5Hands-on: animate your club presentation

Movement with a purpose

Adding a transition

Adding animations

The Animation Pane

Hands-on: animate your club presentation