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Kids Animation Tutorial Part 2, Character Design Stage with Powerpoint

by David Fox

Welcome to my second instalment of an animation tutorial I am doing with my buddy Carlos Campos for our channel Kindertunes, where Carlos shows us his process for creating an animated video for kids, step-by-step, using Powerpoint and some other digital tools.

To recap our last animation tutorial + interview, Carlos basically was working on his “idea board” using Powerpoint, and coming up with some of the designs for the characters in this video he’ll be working on, which is going to be for the Christmas classic, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

This will be the song with both lyrics and vocals, with an animated video accompanying it, with character design and animations all by Carlos.

So, on to the next part of the tutorial. After Carlos finished up creating some models and elements in Powerpoint, he moved on to refining those models, which are essentially the characters and the animated elements that make each of them up.

Here’s a picture of how Rudolph is coming along.

Things, as you can see, are getting a bit more detailed, but they’re not completely refined to the point where they’re quite ready to be animated yet. This process can take a little while. It’s where the characters get all of their personality, so there’s a benefit to not rushing it along.

At the same time, you have to know a few things about Powerpoint in order to get anywhere here. As such, because I’m a Powerpoint newb myself, I decided to ask him some questions about the software and how it works in regards to animations such as these.

DF: When it comes to Powerpoint, what can you say about using this software in terms of advantages and such?

CC: PowerPoint is extremely versatile here, which is why I’ve come to appreciate it so much, and why it’s become one of my main tools when it comes to design software.

Essentially, it is part of the Microsoft Office Suite and is often used as a software for presentations. The “workspace” it offers acts like a sort of canvas and several of them can be used in the same project.

They’re known as “slides”. In each slide one can input information in the form of text, images, video… and each of this elements can be manipulated at will through the use of certain commands.

One of its main advantages is that programs from the Microsoft Office Suite have become nearly ubiquitous among computer users. They are available for both Mac OS and Windows.

This guarantees compatibility between platforms in most cases. The software is designed specifically for each platform though, which means that, for the most part, they both have the same features, but may still vary to some degree.

I personally use PowerPoint for Mac OS and use it to create the character models you saw earlier and, as PowerPoint also has the option to animate certain elements within and across slides, I can animate most of them directly in PowerPoint.

DF: So Powerpoint can animate? Tell me more!

CC: Sure thing! In the images from our project shown here, you can see how the animation pane actually looks in the PowerPoint interface.

 

As you can see, there are many elements that can be selected and different effects can be applied to them. For instance, they can fade or zoom in or out, spin, change color, grow/shrink, or blink, just to name a few possibilities.

They can also move across the slide in various set paths. It is also possible to combine two or more animations and apply them to the same object. Like a spin and a zoom-in, for example.

In the next image, you can see that the list of object visible has been shortened since a menu that was previously hidden was now made visible.

CC: This is the ‘properties’ menu. From there, you can select any animation you’ve applied onto any object. As you can see, the object that has been selected is called Circle Burst.

Again, I rename every object to be able to track it down and know which one it is that I’m working with. There are 3 types of effects: Entrance, Emphasis and Exit Effects. That’s a lot of E’s, I know.

The one I’ve chosen is an Emphasis Effect (in yellow). Combined with other objects and animations, it gives the effect of lines radiating from an object, like a flat explosion or a circle “bursting”, hence the name.

This is to signal that the object is appearing, and emphasize its position. From this panel, you can indicate whether you want the animation to start or end more gradually, have it happen more that once, decide how long you want it to be and if you want for it to play automatically or when clicked.

This is usually for presentations where there’s a presenter changing the slides, but in this case we want it to happen automatically. We can delay it for as long as we want to in regards to when the slide comes into view.

Slides can also have transitions between each other and fade in and out, have all sorts of wild and crazy effects or just change from one to the other seamlessly.

There’s a lot of room to play with these settings and with all of those options available, animating is made much more simple. There are certainly many other animation programs out there.

They can have a very steep learning curve or a ton of over-specific features, but they can also be helpful when working with 3D models or just really detailed stuff. It’s all a matter of personal choice and needs, I think.

DF: So how close are you to finishing this stage of things? It looks like there’s a lot of stuff laid out.

CC: Yeah! This is only one of the multiple slides to be used in this particular project.

Right now, there are over 30 slides in total! The story sequence of the song is almost done by now, and in relation to the video, I’m at a point where the song is almost over.

I’m very excited to share the final result with you!

DF: Will you be adapting all of this to another animation program?

CC: When needed, I complement the animation with the video-editing software I’m using. In this case, it is Shotcut. I also use iMovie sometimes.

There’s a neat green/blue screen feature that allows for the overlapping of two videos. That can be very useful for including new elements on top of the already existing ones.

Right now I’m working on another project which will probably require me to migrate to the Adobe Suite environment temporarily. That would be Adobe Animate software. Again, it is a bit more specialized and, in my experience, not as accessible.

Still comes in handy.

DF: Powerpoint files are interchangeable with this other software?

CC: In most cases, yes. It has a ton of export options, and there’s file conversion, too! Which is super convenient when working across systems.

I can transform it into pdf, then vector format, or turn PowerPoint elements directly into image files, or video! It’s something you don’t really get with other platforms.

DF: This is all thanks to Powerpoint?

CC: Yup! Some third-party software can be used if needed, of course. I think what’s most important is to have final product that works. Sometimes programs don’t behave well… lol. So that requires finding alternatives.

DF: What file formats are we talking here?

CC: Image-wise: .png, .jpeg, .tiff, .bmp, too! Video exports allow for MP4 and MOV or WMV I believe, depending on your version and operating system.

There’s PowerPoint’s native .ppt and .pptx, also .pdf as mentioned earlier. I believe there’s even a way to render elements as text, though I am not sure how that works or what it produces as an output as I’ve never had the need to use it.

With .pdf, .svg is also a possibility! I can then take it to some other program such as InkScape or Illustrator and verify/tweak it there if needed.

DF: Good to hear all of these formats are basically interconnected in some way. Makes it all easier.

CC: Boy, it does!! Haha

DF: Anything else we want to mention to the people out there? Or should we wait until the next lesson?

CC: I think we covered most of it for now! It feels like a little bit of a crash course on PowerPoint itself probably, haha, but we just talked about the basics here. It is just to give you an idea of what this software is about.

Of course, it’s not perfect, nor are any of the other applications out there, but I consider it to be a great tool. Going into detail over how every animation is done individually would take a huge amount of time!

Probably wouldn’t even fit in one article! Haha. Again, my advice to those who are interested in getting started is to just start playing around and try finding creative ways to translate your ideas and inspiration from other sources, and from the real world, into animated sequences.

Just give it a try! There’s also a bunch of tutorials online and checking them out certainly wouldn’t hurt!

DF: Sounds good man, let’s see where the next tutorial takes us!

CC: Can’t wait!!!

Lastly here, this is a picture of Carlos’ written notes that goes along with what he does with the software. As he says, he likes to write things down with a paper and pen as well, because it helps his creative process.

You at home might want to try this too!

 

About David Fox

David Fox is an artist who created davidcharlesfox.com to talk about art and creativity. He loves to write, paint, and take pictures. David is also a big fan of spending time with his family and friends.

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