PowerPoint animation is a form of animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 which uses Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system...

 and similar programs to create a game

Game

A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...

 or movie. The artwork is generally created using PowerPoint's AutoShape features, and then animated slide-by-slide or by using Custom Animation. These animations can then be shared by transferring the PowerPoint file they were created in, and can be viewed with PowerPoint or Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

's free PowerPoint Viewer.
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Custom Animation

Custom Animation is a set of effects which can be applied to objects in PowerPoint so that they will animate in the Slide Show. They can be added under the Custom Animation function or through the use of Visual Basic for Applications

Visual Basic for Applications

Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 and its associated integrated development environment , which are built into most Microsoft Office applications...

 (VBA). PowerPoint 2000 and earlier versions introduced basic effects such as Appear, Dissolve, Fly In and so forth. In PowerPoint 2002/XP and later versions, the Custom Animation feature was improved, adding new animation effects grouped into four categories: Entrance, Emphasis, Exit, and Motion Paths. The effects were later modified in PowerPoint 2010.

Transitions are effects similar to Custom Animation, but are different in that they can only be applied singularly to individual slides as they change from one slide to another and are limited in options. More slide transitions were added to the selection in PowerPoint 2010.

Entrance effects can be set to objects so that they enter with animations during Slide Show. Emphasis effects animate the objects on the spot. Exit effects allow objects to leave the Slide Show with animations. Motion Paths allow objects to move around the Slide Show. Each effect contains variables such as start (On click, With previous, After previous), delay, speed, repeat and trigger. This makes animations more flexible and interactive, similar to Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

.

Animation Trigger

Animation Trigger is another feature introduced in Microsoft PowerPoint 2002/XP and the later versions (but, to date, not for Macintosh). This feature allows animators to apply effects that can be triggered when a specific object on the Slide Show is clicked. This feature is the basis for the majority of PowerPoint games, which usually involve clicking objects to advance.

Games

Using hyperlink

Hyperlink

In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...

s and Animation Triggers, one can create games such as Jeopardy, using the tools to maneuver from question to answer. Taking this same principle, the animator can also make more complex games similar to a dungeon game or escape-the-room

Escape the room

Escape the room is a subgenre of point-and-click adventure game which requires a player to escape from imprisonment by exploiting their surroundings. They are usually created as a browser game for the Adobe Flash platform. Popular examples include "Crimson Room," "Viridian Room," "MOTAS,", "Droom"...

 game. In this format, the animator can create a domain where the player chooses to go right or left, or pick up objects, and so forth. The process takes time, but is generally cheaper and easier than using multimedia software such as Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

.

For more experienced users, Visual Basic for Applications

Visual Basic for Applications

Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 and its associated integrated development environment , which are built into most Microsoft Office applications...

 (VBA) is also commonly used in PowerPoint to keep scores, enter inputs and so forth. With the help of VBA, animations can be programmed with more flexibility. VBA also adds the functions of being able to keep score and save games, along with other features only available through programming rather than the usual interface.

Callum A. Heard, known by his online username "Callum's Projects", started a project called "The Future of PowerPoint Games". With the use of high-level VBA programming, Callum has made it possible to detect keys pressed by the user within PowerPoint presentations. Callum then continued with his project to make 3D modelling possible in PowerPoint, his intentions were to bring PowerPoint to the level of Flash.

Animations

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PowerPoint can also function as a movie maker program. The animator using PowerPoint works similarly to an animator using cel

Cel

A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...

s, using a succession of slides to create the illusion of movement. Many tools within the PowerPoint program can be easily used for maximum effect. Drawing tools such as AutoShapes, contains lines, connectors, basic shapes, block arrows, flowchart components, 'freeforms' (AutoShapes drawn by the mouse on pen tool)
and banners, callouts and action buttons, help draw out a slide. Custom Animations and sound tools can also be used to help add excitement to the project and create interest in what might have been an otherwise dull presentation. The process of drawing out multiple slides takes time, but, again, it is considered to be less expensive and easier to use than buying and using professional graphics animation software.

Another way to produce these animations is by animating a cartoon as a single slide acting as a frame of film. This allows the slide show to run like an animated film. This is time consuming, but the artist has much more control and can do much more detailed and precise animation. It also allows control over the timing of the animation. This also make editing of the animation easier afterward. On average, month's work of such animation usually ends up at about a minute in length. A three minute animation can take around three to four months to complete depending on the amount of detail, these lengthy cartoons usually run around 1,800 slides.

Using Custom Animation, cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

s or movies similar to those created in Adobe Flash can be done with PowerPoint. With minimum time, an animator can produce a simple show similar to a stick figure

Stick figure

A stick figure is a very simple type of drawing made of lines and dots, often of the human form or other animals. In a stick figure, the head is represented by a circle, sometimes embellished with details such as eyes, mouth or crudely scratched-out hair. The arms, legs and torso are all...

 movie, where the body movements are animated using Motion Paths and Emphasis effects. An example released under PowerPoint Heaven, has a section called the Shadow Fighter series which demonstrates PowerPoint movies.

Drawbacks

Though animations can be created easily using Custom Animations provided in Microsoft PowerPoint, it may be much more tedious to complete a project in PowerPoint than in professional animation programs such as Adobe Flash due to the absence of key frame

Key frame

A key frame in animation and filmmaking is a drawing that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. They are called "frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film...

s and tweening

Tweening

Inbetweening or tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion...

.

When effects such as Emphasis Grow/Shrink and Spin are applied to objects, they may appear to be jagged or pixelated when previewing in the slide show. In addition, excessive use of these effects may degrade the slide show's performance. PowerPoint's built in Hardware Graphics Acceleration feature does help in minimizing these setbacks, however. Graphics acceleration, though, requires a video card that supports Microsoft Direct3D

Direct3D

Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...

. Additionally, some animations may appear different when played in older versions of PowerPoint, or not be present at all.

PowerPoint 2000 and later versions introduced macro security to help protect computers from malicious code

Macro virus (computing)

In computing terminology, a macro virus is a virus that is written in a macro language: that is to say, a language built into a software application such as a word processor...

 within a PowerPoint presentation. This led to disabling all VBA

Visual Basic for Applications

Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 and its associated integrated development environment , which are built into most Microsoft Office applications...

 or macro code by default, causing presentations containing codes unable to run properly, unless the viewer adjusted their macro security settings to the Low setting. Security Warning in PowerPoint 2007 alerts the user of macros in a presentation as soon as it is opened, giving the option to run the presentation with or without the macros enabled.

Powerpoint is unavailable for Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, iOS and other operating systems, meaning that unlike open-source alternatives such as SVG, animations are not portable

Software portability

Portability in high-level computer programming is the usability of the same software in different environments. The prerequirement for portability is the generalized abstraction between the application logic and system interfaces...

across a range of computers or phones.