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George Lucas must be so proud of Microsoft. In PowerPoint 2002 and 2003, you can now make Star Wars type animations. The text crawls from bottom to the top, diminishing in size until it fades into oblivion. You expect to see the Millennium Falcon zoom by at any moment.
It's definitely a cool effect, but it's not possible to do with just a single animation style. However, if you combine multiple animations, you can recreate the effect from the movie.
Get the Download
To get started, you need to right-click to download this PowerPoint presentation that has a night sky background image already inserted. Choose Save As to save the file to your hard disk. Remember to save your presentation after each step.
As you go through the steps, you may want to preview the animation to fine-tune it.
1. Open the sample presentation.
The presentation already has a suitable background image inserted. Insert a new slide (Ctrl + M) and choose Format | Slide Layout. Click the Blank layout option.This option is the top left option within Content Layouts, which changes the layout of the active slide.
2. Select the Text Box button.
This button is on the Drawing toolbar.
Next click anywhere on the screen and type a single or two-line credit text. For example, I've typed Concept And Creation / Geetesh Bajaj on two lines. With the text box still selected, center the text by clicking on the icon on the Formatting toolbar or just press Ctrl + E. Since the sample has a dark night sky background, ensure that you choose white or some other light color for the text. You might also want to make the text bold and/or increase the size of the font.
3. Drag the text box.
Move the box to the bottom center of the slide. Now right-click and choose Custom Animation. This command activates the Custom Animation task pane.
4. Click the Add Effect button.
Then choose Motion Paths | Up. If the Up option is not visible within your recently used Motion Paths, you might have to choose the More Motion Paths… option.
5. Customize the settings.
Once you have chosen the Up Motion Path, make sure that your settings for the motion path match these:
6. Click the red arrow.
With your text box still at the bottom and the motion path animation selected, you should be able to see a green arrow and dot over the text box. You also should see a red arrow and dot elsewhere on the slide that shows the extent of the Up movement. Click the red arrow to select the path. If you see two white placeholders on either side of the path you know that the path is selected. Drag the white placeholder on the peak of the path to the top of the slide. Ensure that the bottom of the path is somewhere close to the bottom of your slide.
7. Add another animation.
With the text still selected, add another animation. Click the Add Effect button and choose Emphasis | Grow/Shrink. Again, if the Grow/Shink option is not visible, you have to choose it from the More Effects… option.
8. Customize the settings.
Match your settings for the Grow/Shrink options with these:
9. Fade the text on exit
The first motion path animation moved the text from the bottom of the slide to the top. The second emphasis animation reduced the size of the text as it moved from bottom to top. Now, you need to ensure that the text fades into oblivion as it exits from the slide. So you need to add an exit custom animation. Click the Add Effect button and choose Exit | Fade. If the Fade option is not visible, you have to choose it from the More Effects… option.
10. Customize the settings.
Match your settings for the Fade options with these:
Since you want all the three animations to happen simultaneously, choose the ‘Slow' speed option for all three. If you want to choose a different speed, you need to change the speed to all the three animations (the Motion Path, the Emphasis and the Exit).
11. Extend and Repeat
Drag the text box off the slide (just beyond the bottom of the slide). You might want to extend the motion path upwards to compensate for the added downward distance of the text box.
Duplicate the text box by copying and pasting. Change the text credits as required and place the text box immediately over the earlier text box. Repeat to create as many text boxes as required. Since all the text boxes overlap each other, it might be a little difficult to edit the text within them later. Use the Tab key to select each of these text boxes one at a time so that you don't inadvertently make changes to a text box that you did not intend to edit!
Now, do one last preview of your slide. You might want to compare it with your downloaded sample presentation to check the settings I've used or to match the presentations.
More Ideas
You just duplicated an animated text box within the same slide. You can carry this concept forward to duplicate text boxes across slides and even presentations, thus making short work of an otherwise tedious job.
Experiment with adding a Star Wars style sound track to the credits slide. You can search the Internet for a Star Wars theme sound in WAV or MP3 format. However, be sure to respect any copyright implications.
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