Motion Paths

PowerPoint 2003 has some really neat features that you might like to try. You can “trace a path” for an image to follow around or across the slide. You can have a porpoise jumping in and out of the water at the bottom of the slide, or maybe a bee flying around in the top portion. If you want to do this we’ll show you how. If not, skip to the next section.

Then, we copied the bee from Organize Clips and pasted it onto the blank slide template. We made the size of the bee fairly small and then moved the bee to the lower left corner of the blank slide template (see image at lower left). We then placed our cursor over the bee and clicked the RIGHT mouse button to bring up a menu which includes Custom Animation. We then selected Custom Animation (see image at left).

When we clicked Custom Animation, we saw an Add Effect Button appear ( 1. ). We clicked the Add Effect button ( 1. ). In the menu that appeared, we clicked Motion Paths ( 2. ). In the next menu, we moved down and clicked Draw Custom Path ( 3. ). In the last menu to appear we clicked Freeform ( 4. ).

After clicking-on Freeform, we moved our mouse into the template slide and noticed that our cursor image had changed to “cross hairs.” We moved the crosshairs over the bee in the lower left corner of the slide template we clicked and held down the left mouse button. With the left button held down, we slowly began to move the cursor to the top of the template. We noticed that the cursor now looked like a little pencil. As long as we held down the left mouse button, the pencil traced a path around the slide. Since we were drawing the Motion Path for a bee, we drew circles around our slide.

When we finished, we needed to turn off the pencil. We simply clicked the left mouse button twice – quickly – and the pencil went away. As soon as we quickly clicked twice, we also noticed that our bee flew very, very fast around the path we had drawn.

The image below is what our slide looked like when we finished.

You can see the “flight path” for our bee begins in the lower left corner and goes up and down around the slide and exits at the right.

We’ll slow our bee down - a lot - and insert a buzzing sound as the bee flies around.

On the right side of the screen, in the Custom Animation portion of the screen, we noticed that when we completed that bee flight path that something new appeared (animated bee).

We moved our mouse over the small down arrow on the right of this area and clicked-on the small down arrow. A drop down menu, similar to the one on the right appeared. We clicked Effect Options and the image below appeared.

Since we selected Custom Path, to create our flying bee effect, the menu screen at the right appeared when we clicked-on Effect Options. Notice, at the top of the menu, there are two tabs. We are “on” the Timing tab. Our bee flew very fast and we would like to slow it down. So, we chose 5 seconds (Very Slow). We also wanted our bee to wait a few seconds after we moved to Slide 9 to begin its flying. So, we also chose a delay of three seconds (see arrows to the right). To complete this menu screen click OK.

To slow our bee down even more, we chose Effect Options again and typed in 20 (seconds). This will really slow the path. Experiment and choose a time that you like. You may also desire to have the “bee fly” when you move to Slide 9. If so, choose After Previous instead of On Click. Experiment as you like.

To insert a sound with our bee image (buzzing), we went to ClipArt on Office Online once more and searched for “buzzing” and found a number of buzzing sounds. We downloaded these as we’ve done before.

To add a sound to your image is a bit tricky. You again click-on Event Options as you did before. When the menu screen appears (like the one to the right) choose the Effect tab (see top arrow).

Then click-on the down arrow to the right of Sound and move down the menu until you see Other Sound. Click-on Other Sound. A menu screen will appear similar to the one at the top of the next page.

Click the small down arrow to the right of Look in. When the drop down screen appears, select My Documents (double-click twice quickly on My Documents or click-on Open), then select My Pictures (double-click or Open) and then select Microsoft Clip Organizer (double-click or Open).

You should then see a menu screen similar to the one on the right. The “goofy” numbers you see are the “names” of the sounds you downloaded! We said this was tricky.

Click-on one of the sounds and then click-on OK. This will take you back to the menu screen. You will hear your sound play if your volume is set high enough.

To complete your menu screen click OK.

Note: if you loose, or don’t see the path, the dashed line that you drew for your image, RIGHT click-on the image and choose Custom Animation - like you did before. This will cause the path to reappear and the right side of your screen to again show the Custom Animation area.

At the bottom of the Custom Animation area, on the right side of the screen, you will notice that the area looks like the image to the right. Anytime you are working with animation you will see this image. Notice that you can Play your animation effects anytime you desire by clicking-on the Play button. If you desire to see how this slide will “look” when you present your PowerPoint slide show, click-on Slide Show (we’re going to get to this next - for the entire show).