Animate pictures and shapes

The process of animating any object is the same: select what you want to animate, add an animation, and then choose effect options.

Let's think about what we can do with this slide. The point of the slide is to introduce each person.

So, let's do that by using an Entrance animation to bring in each picture.

Select the first picture, go to the ANIMATIONS tab and open the gallery.

We could do a motion animation, like Fly In. But let's try a simple Fade animation instead.

That's nice, because it supports the design. Let's also do something with the shapes behind each picture.

For these, we need to use an Emphasis animation because the shapes will already be on the slide.

There is Wave again. It is interesting, but we need something a bit more subtle. Like Fill Color.

And in Effect Options, change the color to orange. That'll work.

Next, we need to copy these animations and options to the other pictures and shapes.

Here is an easy way to do that. Select the first picture. Then, double-click the Animation Painter.

Now, all you have to do is click the other pictures, and the animation and settings are copied.

Click Animation Painter again to turn it off.

Now, we'll do the same for the shapes.

All the animations are in place, but we are not done yet. Click Preview.

The animations play correctly, but not in the right order.

To fix that, open the Animation Pane.

This is an essential tool for working with animations.

It lists all the animations in the order they occur, and the names of the objects that are being animated.

It is also a timeline that shows how long each animation runs, and it shows how each animation is triggered (or starts).

Notice that the names of the objects are not necessarily related to where they appear on the slide.

Click an object to see which animation is associated with it. For example, the first picture is the first animation, but its name is Picture 3.

First, let's put the animations in the right order. To do that, click an animation and drag it to a new position.

We want the first picture to animate with the first shape; the second picture with the second shape; and the third picture with the third shape.

Click here to preview the animation. It looks like everything is running in the right order.

But next, we need to change when the animations play.

Currently, each animation is set to start with a mouse click.

That means, we need to click once to run a picture, then again to run the shape, then again to run the next picture, and so on.

What we want is for each picture to start with a click, and for the shapes behind each picture to start at the same time.

So here is how we fix that.

Right-click the first shape, and select Start With Previous.

Now, the shape animation will start when the picture animation starts. Let's also do that with the two remaining shapes.

Press Shift+F5 to run the current slide.

When we click, the picture fades in and the shape changes colors. And that goes for the second and third picture and shape too.

Almost perfect. But, let's do one more thing.

These bars in the timeline display the duration of each animation.

Click the right border of each shape, and drag it to the left to shorten the duration of the color change.

Use the screen tip to set an end time of one second.

Of course, you can do a lot more with shapes, pictures, clip art and all the other objects, but now you have a good start.

Up next, let's take a quick look at some interesting things you can do with charts and SmartArt.