MacMost Now 809: Simple Animation With Keynote

Keynote can be used to create simple animation. You can use the Magic Move transition to animate objects and move them to different positions on the screen. You can also use transitions to create simple movement and special effects. You can use these in your Keynote presentations, or export them to video file to use in iMovie.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's look at how you can do simple animation using Keynote.
So if you want to do some serious professional animation you are going to want to get an animation tool like Adobe Flash or maybe something else in the Mac App Store. But if you want to do something simple say for a school project or just something to add into a home video then you can use Keynote for some very basic animation.
So here I'm going to start out with a basic black template and I'm going to switch it so the master is showing a blank one. So I'm going to start with a black slate. Then I'm going to drag and drop a graphic from the desktop into Keynote, shrink it down. Pretty simple graphic and I'm going to show it animating from left to right. In order to do that I'm going to use Magic Move. 
In order to use Magic Move you need two slides that are pretty much identical. They have the same elements on them. So I'm going to control click here and duplicate this slide. 
I'm going to go back to the first one and I'm going to open up the Inspector. In the Inspector I'm going to change the Transition effect to Magic Move. Now I want to go to the second slide here and I'm going to move this element to the right. So now I have it here on the first one on the left and one the second one on the right and the first one for Transition I've got Magic Move effect.
So I'm going to test it out now by hitting Play and if I click on the space bar right here it will animate from one slide to the next.
I can have some fun with this example by duplicating this and option drag the horse. So I'm going to have a little race. I'm going to delete this slide just to make it nice and clean and then I'm going to duplicate over here again and then I'm going to move them all to the right but have one, that's the winner. Like that. I can even add text that is only on that second slide so it won't be animated at all because it is not on the first slide. Let's see how that works if I were to play this. Go back to that first slide, space bar, and you can see.
So let's do another one. This time I'm going to drag a background graphic in and I'm going to use some text. Here I will do a text box. I'm going to turn that into an "X" and I'm going to increase the size of it. I'm also going to change the color. There. So I've got a little X there. I'm going to make three copies of it. Make another copy here and change it to an "O". We're just going to make a little football animation. Like that.
Then I'm going to hit Control click here and duplicate it. On this one here I'm going to move it over as if the play has been running. Then I'm going to go to the first slide, bring up the Inspector and set the Transition to Magic Move. Now notice here I can also set the duration of Magic Move and it gives me a little bit of an animation here. I can click again and I can see it actually animating. I can set it to automatically start the transition or do it when I click.
So let me slow this down a bit here. Let's go to the first slide, hit Play and you can see that animation. I could actually then continue and duplicate this slide here and then continue with the movement like that and then do Magic Move on this as well and I have two stages here. So let's go back to start, I tap the space bar once and it stops there. I tap is again and it continues.
Now you can also do animation with Transition. So I'm going to have three slides here, three blank slides. The first one is going to be blank. The second one is going to have this rocket graphic I'm going to drop in there and let me go and move it to kinda past the middle of the screen there. I'm going to shrink it down a bit and I'm going to set the Transition so that it pushes up. So Push and then Bottom to Top. You can see in the preview here that it is going to make it rise from the bottom from a blank slide into the slide with the rocket.
Then on the last slide I'm going to put an explosion right here in the middle, kind of positioning it so it is right where the rocket ends up. Then the Transition there, I'm going to have no transition at all but I'm going to have it do it automatically. So in other words have it automatically go from one frame to the next. Now if I go to the beginning here and hit Play the rocket will shoot up and then explode.
I can even select this explosion here and go to the build Inspector and select something cool like maybe say Shimmer there and then for Shimmer I can make sure it is going to build in not on click but automatically. Now if I run the entire thing it does that. Kind of a cheesy effect but it is at least a little bit of animation you can do if you have Keynote and you have no other tools available.
Of course what you may want to do then is to export the Keynote as a video and then import that into iMovie and use it in your next video.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacMost Now 809: Simple Animation With Keynote”

Squafdonoboles

12 years ago

Can it be exported as a GIF animation?

Gary Rosenzweig

Not from Keynote. There might be other software that could convert a video to an animated GIF.

Ken Smith

Thank you for this interesting video. I'd really love to see you produce a book on Keynote, similar to your "My Pages" book, which I have found to be quite valuable.

Adolfo

Wow, easy, but nice. Thanks Gary.

Greg Parry

Thanks for this. I have a slightly complex graph (economics) on which the X and Y axes dim and reappear during the 'magic move', rather than my target lines. Suggestions welcome.

Rich O

Well, just off the cuff, I would say to make sure you don't have any Build-in &/or Build-out settings on the graphics in questions. At the moment that is the only thing I can think of that might cause the opacity of these graphics to change during the Magic Move. Hope this helps.

Thanks, Rich. But I don't have any builds.

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 809: Simple Animation With Keynote

Comments: 7 Responses to “MacMost Now 809: Simple Animation With Keynote”

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