This month ... animations in presentations ...

A feature that is often used (abused?) in presentations by speakers who use Powerpoint, Freelance Graphics, or Corel Presentation is to have the title of a slide come flying in from the edge, top, or bottom. Or, it might spin around in a circle or wipe around the edges or ... Then, once the title is in, the various points covered in the slide come sailing in next. The logic is, then, we need Powerpoint in order to do these fancy things and presentations.

If you have Hyperstudio (and who doesn't!), nothing could be further from the truth. Not only can you do the above, but you aren't locked into templates while doing it.

Here's how.

Design your title to be animated. You can do this with any graphics program that you want. Kid Pix is an excellent choice. CorelDraw! is great. Design your title and make it as fancy or involved as you want. Save it on your hard drive as a graphics file.

Now, create a new card for your title or pointed lists.

From the Object Menu, select "About this Card". You'll notice that there is a box that you can check and select "Things to do when ... arriving at this card..." Check that and you'll have the option to play an animation. Here's where we create your fancy title animation.

When Hyperstudio prompts you for a graphic, choose the graphic that you just created above. Your standard "draw your animation path and press a key when complete" screen appears. At this point, draw whatever effect you want for your title. You can do circles; you can do squares, you can even go off the screen and then come back. When you're done, press a key to let Hyperstudio know that you're ready for the next step.

 

There are a couple of things you will want to do here. First of all, if the title is going to float over a coloured background, click the "Transparent color" check box, click on the "click to change" area and use the dropper that appears to pick up the background colour. Secondly, the default is to erase your image when it's done. We don't want that so uncheck that option.

Your title card is ready to go!