Animated Masking and Cutout Effects in E-Learning Design #356

Masking and Cutout Effects in E-Learning #356: Challenge | Recap

What Moves Gets Noticed

Animations are effective ways to draw focus and attention to an area of your slides. Moving on-slide objects helps to create focal points, illustrate complex procedures, and help learners visualize change e-learning.

Animation effects can also be used to set and control the pacing of your course. Combined with masking or cutout graphics, you can create animated effects that elevate your course designs. Take a look at the following examples.

Meet the Team Animated Cards

Notice how the images animate out of view? They disappear into the borders of the card instead of flying off the slide. This example is interesting because the animations appear constrained to the specific area of the profile card.

View the project | Download

How Does the Effect Work?

The effect is created by using a cover graphic with a cutout area for transparency.

The cutout can be created in just about any graphics app from Photoshop to PowerPoint.

Animated Photo Collage Image Slider

Here's another example that uses the same masking and animated effects. 

View the project | Download

In this example, the cover graphic is the same size as the slide with a smaller area cutout for the larger character images.

Masking effects combined with animation can help you create special effects that go beyond the defaults. And that's what this week's challenge is all about!

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to share an animated example that uses either a masking or cutout effect for one or more slide elements.

Resources

• Storyline 360: Working with Layers
• Storyline 360: Working with Triggers
• Storyline 360: Adding Animations
• Triggering Motion Paths Based on Learners' Actions

Share Your E-Learning Work

• Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post.
• Forums: Start  your own thread and share a link to your published example..
• Personal blog:  If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We’ll link back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure.

Social Media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness. 

Last Week’s Challenge:

To help animate your creativity, check out the ways course designers are using interactive dials for menu navigation:

Using Dials for Navigation RECAP #355: Challenge | Recap

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.

Learn more about the challenges in this Q&A post and why and how to participate in this helpful article.