Create-Amazing-Clip-Art-Animation

Partha Bhattacharya

Create Amazing Clip Art Animation Video in PowerPoint

First Edition: May 2012 Revised: February 2014

This is a work of technical guidance for do-it-yourself web video makers and web marketers. Care is taken to make the information contained in this book complete, correct, and easy to follow and implement.

About This Book

I am often reminded the adage, it is easy to make things simple provided you know how to do it.

Man goes a long way finding out ways and means to communicate as best as he can, but often overlooks what he can do easily and effectively.

This in a nutshell describes this book.

The web today is now in a position where video communication has become necessary. Whatever the purpose, there has to be a video for that. The good news is that you can make a video easily. This book shows how you can create amazing videos using simple clip arts in PowerPoint.

Clip arts, or cartoons if you like, are great communicators. In this book you will learn how to easily animate clip arts to make eye-popping PowerPoint videos. And then upload them to YouTube.

Writing any book is a learning experience for the author, and it helps to listen from the readers of the book about their experience in following the concepts explained in the book. So, as much as you, the reader, learn from this book, I also learn as an author from your experience.

Please write to me at [email protected] and tell your story about this book.

About The Author

Partha Bhattacharya specializes in planning and creating web content. He offers training and consultation to small entrepreneurs on WordPress, SEO, content writing, e- learning business, web video making, and self-publishing on Amazon.

Partha has authored several ebooks for small web business, and is the founder of HubSkills.Com where he writes helpful tips and suggestions for d-i-y web entrepreneurs.

Partha may be contacted at [email protected] or at following websites.

 hubskills.com  youtube.com/hubskills  facebook.com/hubskills

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: What Is a Clip Art?

Chapter 2: Sourcing Clip Arts for Animation

Chapter 3: Breaking Up WMF Clip Art into Small Elements

Chapter 4: Editing & Animating Small Vector Elements

Chapter 5: Getting Inspired…Tell Your Story with Clip Art Video

Chapter 6: Uploading Your Clip Art Video to YouTube

1/ What Is a Clip Art?

Clip art is a creation by hand.

According to Wikipedia, clip art refers to pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. In the present times, most clip art is created, distributed, and used in electronic form.

This means that the clip arts that we normally see on the web are mostly made with computer software. Here are a few examples, courtesy Wikipedia (Figure 1).

Figure 1

A great source for clip arts is the Open Clipart, which is a large collaboration community with a collection of more than 50,000 clip arts as of this writing.

Most of the clip arts in Open Clipart are released to the public domain and may be used in any project for free and with no restrictions.

If you are a clip art enthusiast, Open Clipart offers the opportunity to test your skill by editing a clip art in online editors. The following image in SVG format gives an example of that (Figure 2). You can find it here.

Figure 2

Clip arts usually come in 3 formats, all of which are vector file formats. They are the Adobe’s EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), Microsoft’s WMF (Windows Metafile), and the more recent SVG format (Scalable Vector Graphics) brought out by the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.

In this book we will concentrate on the WMF format from Microsoft and other sources. Compared to the other two, WMF is much simpler though less sophisticated vector file format. Let me briefly take you down the memory lane of the history of clip arts.

In the old days people drew illustrations of what they see and feel around them, and they did them on various medium including using carbon pencils on papers.

It is generally acknowledged that illustrations, rather than the words to describe the subject, tell stories more vividly (remember the saying, a picture is worth thousand words), and so they are considered as being useful and practical in the learning of new things and ideas.

For example the following illustration of Bathing in the Ganges by AS Forrest nicely brings forth the use of the river Ganges by the people in India.

You could read a whole essay on it, but this superb illustration would surely remain in your memory for a long time. As an aside, though this sketch must be quite an old work of art, what is interesting is that the practice it depicts is still prevalent in the large parts of India.

Figure 3 12

Before we venture to the next chapter, let me put the aim of this book in perspective. As a video maker you’ll need to rely on pictures, graphics, illustrations, and the like to drive home the message contained in a video.

This is important to understand because if you don’t use a video camera – which you probably won’t for most training videos - you need to be a bit innovative to make your video stand out in the crowd.

Clip arts help you do that. And if you can animate the clip art…well, nothing like it! We will start our journey by knowing the various sources of clip arts that you can animate.

Over to the next chapter!

2/ Sourcing Clip Arts for Animation

In the previous chapter we discussed that most clip arts that are used on the web are in vector file formats. Vector graphics combine the use of geometrical objects like point, line, curve, shape and polygon, and are therefore based on mathematical expressions to represent images in computer graphics.

In simple terms, a vector image is much superior to the pixel-based raster image for the following important reasons:

Small file size because of minimal information transmitted

Making changes like moving, scaling, rotating, filing, etc. do not degrade the quality of the image

Images can be zoomed in, and still remain smooth

You may, for its inherent quality, import a small-sized clip art, and then resize it to fit into your layout without the fear of it getting distorted.

We will be using clip arts in WMF format (Windows Metafile). Since the time Microsoft introduced it as a 16-bit vector format for use with Windows 3.0 in Word, PowerPoint and Publisher, WMF has become a popular medium for making illustrations.

When used in PowerPoint, it is possible to break up a WMF vector image into small elements. And upon doing so, each element can be further edited and animated independent of the rest of the elements or the image as a whole.

Sounds confusing? Don’t worry. We shall shortly go into actually doing it. Before that let’s look at some sources of WMF clip arts on the web which you can use for your animation video in PowerPoint.

WMF Clipart

A favorite destination for me, WMF Clipart has a fairly large collection to offer for free. The site declares:

Here you will find free clip art pictures, collected from various internet sites and newsgroups, with permissions. All these free clip arts are in public domain, royalty free and can be freely used by anybody.

There are many categories to help you select the one you want. When you choose a clip art, the image appears something as under (Figure 4).

Figure 4

There are 2 images here. One is the GIF image of the green-colored car that the browser displays. The second one is the small square shown by the arrow, which is the WMF file that the browser cannot display.

Right-click on this and then select Save image as.. The image can be saved only in WMG, so save it on your computer.

Clipart.Com

Clipart.com is arguably the largest online collection of royalty-free clipart, photos, vinyl- ready images, Web graphics, illustrations, fonts and sounds.

You get the chance of downloading up to 250 clipart images per week but you have to be a paid subscriber to avail the opportunity. Subscription amount varies from $12.95 a week to $139.95 for a full year (as of this writing).

At Clipart.com when you select an image for use, you may be able to download it in different formats including WMF (Figure 5). Without doubt the quality of the clip arts is really good in Clipart.com. And so if you are a serious user, consider becoming a subscriber in the site.

Figure 5 19

Inserting Clipart in PowerPoint 2010

You can insert a clip art in PowerPoint in mainly 2 ways.

By searching and collecting clip art from outside of PowerPoint like one from WMF Clipart (discussed above)

By searching and inserting clip art from within PowerPoint 2010. These are those among the 1000s of illustrations, photos, animations and sounds in the repository of Microsoft Office.

Following is the example of a resizable clip art (Figure 6) that is just 17 KB in size and has the dimensions 1727 (w) x 1990 (h).

Figure 6

To insert a clip art from within PowerPoint 2010, the steps are as under. I have included the images coming next that explain the steps.

Click Insert on the main menu, and then Clip Art (Figure 7)

The Clip Art pane opens on the right side (Figure 8)

In the Clip Art pane Search for: ‘boy’ in Illustrations (Figure 9)

From the search results, select a clip art, and click Insert from the list that comes (Figure 9)

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9 25

After the clip art is inserted on to the main work area in PowerPoint 2010, you can then alter it as you want for your need. In the next chapter we will see how to break up a WMF clip art into smaller elements that make up the whole.

3/ Breaking up WMF Clip Art into Small Elements

Once you have inserted a WMF clip art on the main work area either from outside or within PowerPoint, the time is now to break up the image into small elements.

And then the fun begins.

First, let’s take a look at how to break the clip art into small elements.

Let me insert the green-colored auto clipart of Figure 4 in my PowerPoint work area. This is a WMF vector image consisting of multiple vector elements to make up the whole image.

How to know that? The steps to follow are as under.

Place the image in the work area (Figure 10)

Now right-click on the image, and from the list of options, select Group and then Ungroup (Figure 11)

A popup may come that says: This is an imported picture, not a group. Do you want to convert it to a Microsoft Office drawing object? Click Yes.

Repeat Step 2. As you do this the image breaks up into small vector elements (see Figure 12)

Click anywhere outside the work area, and the selection handles for the vector elements disappear. Now you can select individual element by clicking on it, and then change its properties as you want.

Figure 10

Figure 11

Figure 12

In the next chapter we will talk about what you can do with the individual vector elements.

4/ Editing & Animating Individual Small Vector Elements

The stage is now set to let your creativity take the wings. PowerPoint offers a vast array of options that you can apply to a vector element just as you do to different objects in your presentations.

To take the example of the above auto clipart, you may animate its different parts to operate successively.

Thus the body structure comes in from the left to sit on the outline of the auto. Next, the color zooms in from middle of the middle of the screen. And finally the tires twist and turn to fly in from the middle of the screen to fit exactly on the wheels.

Take a look at the Figure 13 that gives you a clear idea of 5 different stages of animation of the various parts of the auto. 32

Animation of course adds a different class to the presentation, but you can render several other functions to the various independent vector elements in the elements.

For example, you may do the following actions easily:

Change the color of the vector elements of the car body and that of the wheels by using the Shape Fill option

Add Shape Effects like Shadow, Glow, Soft Edges, & so on

Give the image a 3-D Format and/or 3-D Rotation by right-clicking on it and selecting Format Shape The more you practice, the more you become proficient in changing the properties of the vector elements to give them the exact touch you want for your video.

Figure 13 34

5/ Getting Inspired…Tell Your Story With Clip Art Video

No knowledge is useful unless you apply it.

For umpteen times I am reminded of this axiom, told by my mother when I was young. Among other traits my mother was a good cook.

She found it thrilling to cook with the most unimaginable combination of ingredients, and know what…they would always taste great. I discovered that she failed in her experiments as well, but that only corrected her techniques to follow the next time she cooked the preparation.

The important point with whatever we learn is that we need to put it to use to know if it really works. In the present case, feel inspired to try out animating the clip arts to tell your story. 35

Click the following image to see my first amateurish clip art video I made in April, 2010 for my website, 2WebVideo.Com (Figure 14).

As you will see it is not a great video. In fact more people disliked it on YouTube than those who liked. It was okay, because in the end it helped me overcome the ‘technical’ barrier and made me confident to make more how-to videos on YouTube. Check out my YouTube channel.

You may not be as amateurish as I was. You know the steps to make clip art video as explained in the previous chapters, and more importantly you also know where to source the WMF clip arts for your video.

Figure 14

However, having said that, what surely matters in making a good clip art video – or for that matter, any video – is how you prepare the script. 37

I usually follow some cardinal rules when making a clip art video. Mind you these are my rules; I learned them from experience…for I never attended any formal training. These rules work for me, but feel free to make your own rules.

Write down a script for the video, a sequence of ‘scenes’ or ‘slides’ you want in the video, breaking into as much detail as possible

Find out if you can supplant some of the words in the video with suitable clip arts, even as you may wish to narrate them in a background audio

Search for clip arts and make sufficient selections as deemed fit for your slides

Start making slides with the clip arts and descriptions

Animate the clip arts, and also animate the slides in the PowerPoint presentation

When over, check out the whole presentation and see if it needs any change in any of the slides or clip arts

I have seen many a newbie hesitating to use clip art for animation because they feel their works will not find acceptance.

Well, all I can say is this is not true. For any creation there is always a beginning, and what is important is that you have to make a start. Once the initial barrier is crossed, you’ll find the goings much better and easy.

In the next chapter we will look at how to upload your clip art video to YouTube.

6/ Uploading Your Clip Art Video to YouTube

As such uploading PowerPoint video to YouTube is easy. After your clip art video is ready in PowerPoint, all you need is to produce the video, which will be in WMV format, and then upload it to YouTube.

However there are a few factors that require attention, otherwise there is a chance that your video gets a bad look on YouTube. Of these, the concept of aspect ratio needs to be understood.

According to this Wikipedia article, the 2 most common videographic aspect ratios are 4:3 (1.33:1), the universal video format of the 20th century and 16:9 (1.77:1), universal for high-definition television and European digital television.

This means you need to make your video in one of the 2 aspect ratios for wider acceptance. What clinches the issue in favor of the latter aspect ratio is the shift by YouTube in November 2008 to 720pixel HD-support that changed the YouTube video player to widescreen 16:9.

With this strategy by YouTube, what happened is that all the 4:3 videos developed black bands surrounding the video making it look bad and unprofessional.

In the image below, the video has the 4:3 aspect ratio, and you can see how there are black bands on its either side when viewed in YouTube (Figure 15).

Figure 15

In this support article under Resolutions, YouTube echoes the same guideline as under:

YouTube uses 16:9 aspect ratio players. If you are uploading a non-16:9 file, it will be processed and displayed correctly as well…

With that in perspective, it is necessary that the clip art video you make in PowerPoint also has 16:9 aspect ratio.

Fortunately, this is rather easy to do in PowerPoint. Let us find out how to make a PowerPoint video look crisp and clear and conforming to the 16:9 video format.

The main PowerPoint work-area follows 4:3 aspect ratio by default. So the trick is to make this area conform to 16:9. See the following picture (Figure 16).

Figure 16

As evident in the above image, after you open PowerPoint 2010, (1) click the Design tab at the top menu, (2) click Page Setup that comes beneath to the extreme left, and finally (3) in the Page Setup popup window, select the option On-screen Show (16:9) from the dropdown menu for Slides sized for:

After you do the above, you may rest assured that your clip art video in PowerPoint will in all probability look crisp, clear, and enjoyable for the viewers.

To produce the clip art video, follow the steps below:

(1) Click File on top menu-bar (2) Select Save & Send (3) Select Create a Video under File Types (4) Select video dimensions from Computer & HD Displays, and lastly (5) Click on Create Video.

PowerPoint allows selecting video dimensions from 2 to 3 choices (sl.4). For 16:9 on- screen show, choose 1280x720 pixels, and this will translate to perfect display on YouTube.

Let’s continue. After the video is produced in WMV, play on your computer to see if it is okay. You’ll now proceed to upload your video to YouTube. YouTube does accept WMV along with many other formats as shown in the image below (Figure 17).

Figure 17

A Google account is necessary to upload your video to YouTube. After you login to your YouTube account, click on Upload link at the top, and then onward it is fairly simple to have your video available in the largest video sharing site.

If you want your video to be available for Public viewing, fill up the Title, Description, and the Tags with relevant keywords so that your video shows up when people search for those keywords in YouTube or Google.

Once the video is processed by YouTube, it is available for embedding in any webpage. Grab the embed code and paste it in your website where you want the video to come.

If your video is Unlisted, send the URL to whomever you want the video to watch. In case your video is for Private viewing, a message goes to the YouTube users who you want to watch it.

Conclusion:

Okay, this e-book ends here. Hope you could benefit from the information contained in it. As an author I will be eager to know how this book has helped in your work. So let me know whatever you wish to say by contacting me at my website.

And do take a look at my other e-books on web content skills that will help you fine- tune your ability to create contents people love.

Thank you.