Know-How Screencast - Animate Cut-outs in PowerPoint (Basic)

This 3 minute video shares the basic ideas behind animating Common Craft Cut-outs using PowerPoint.  This screencast is part of series focused on helping you make Common Craft Style videos and presentations. More coming soon!

Related Screencast: Add and Manage Cut-outs in PowerPoint.

Find all know-how resources.

 

Video Transcript:

Hi. This is Lee LeFever with another Common Craft Screencast. Today, we're going to take a look at the basics of animating Common Craft Cut-outs in Powerpoint. We'll assume that you're a Common Craft member and have Cut-outs on your computer, along with Powerpoint.

Let's start by dragging a Cut-out onto a slide. We want this Cut-out to appear on the screen, and animate from left to right. We'll do this with the Custom Animation tool in the Powerpoint toolbox. You can also open it by right-clicking on an image.

To start, we'll position the image where we want it to appear and select it. Then, in the animation box, we'll use the entrance effects option and select Appear. Notice that the image appears in the Animation Order box. Now we need to decide what action will cause it to appear. We'll use the default On Click, which means we'll use the keyboard, mouse or remote to make the image appear on the blank slide.

Now, after the image appears, we want to make animate from left to right. We'll select the image in the animation tool, and select Add Path Animation. We'll use the line option. Once selected, the cursor turns to a cross. We'll create the start and stop points for the animation by clicking and dragging the cursor. It's best to place the marker at the center of the image. Powerpoint will show you the animation immediately. You can change the path by simply dragging the line or points. You can see this animation in action by clicking Play.

Notice that we now have a new animation in the order column. And the order of the items in that column matters. Here we can see that the image will appear, and then animate. Below that, we can set the animation to behave how we want.

Let's say we want the image to appear with a click, and then automatically animate slowly to the right. With the animation line selected, we'll use the Start menu and select After Previous. This means it will automatically start as soon as the last animation finishes. No click required. Then, under Speed, we'll use the Slow option. Now we can click Play to test it.

But the real proof is watching it in Presentation Mode. Here we see a blank screen, until we click which causes the image to appear and animate across the screen. Using these basic settings, you can set up Cut-outs to animate in the style of a Common Craft video.

Learn more about Common Craft Cut-outs and creating your own explanations at CommonCraft.com.