Creating a balloon animation
Oct 04, 2022
Hello,
I'm trying to create an animation of balloons waving in the air, but it's proving harder than I anticipated. As far as I've been able to figure out, there aren't any options for motion paths for things to rotate on a hinge, like balloons tied down would. There's arcs and all sorts of stuff, but nothing for rotating the image back and forth. Looking online, there was a suggestion to use the spin entrance animation. So i took a balloon image from illustrations, doubled the picture's length in photoshop without modifying the balloon, so now i can spin it and it looks almost ok since the string from the balloon ends on the center axis, but I can't seem to change the degree of spin- like, is there a way to get it to spin 15 degrees one way, then 15 the opposite?
I also read another suggestion about turning the object into a dial and doing a bunch of work to make it look right. I'm pretty lazy though, so I wanted to check in with the experts before going down the rabbit hole. Considering what I'm trying to do, any suggestions for the most efficient way to do it would be great.
3 Replies
Hi Susan, I love that you said you're pretty lazy - same! It really is a LOT of work to animate individual items, and I'm all for working smarter, not harder. Depending on what you're trying to do, could you use an animated gif or a video for the balloons? Sometimes the stock videos (if you have Articulate 360) have transparent backgrounds, or backgrounds you can work with. If you're eventually trying to use the balloons as an interactive object, like a button, maybe you could fade from the video to the buttons.
The animations that come with Storyline are somewhat limited. I can do more animation in PowerPoint than in Storyline. Could you animate the balloons in PowerPoint and make a video out of them?
Hey Kristin,
Thanks for the response! I'll have to look into gifs, as I've never worked with them before, and I'd need to cut out the background for them, hopefully I can do that in photoshop. Trying to transition to ID and boy there are a ton of programs to learn... I've never spent too much time animating in powerpoint, guess I'll have to take a look at the advantages it offers as well. Seems like there's nothing too easy for getting the exact animation I want, so guess I'll have to keep tinkering.
Hi Susan. If you're looking for a way to do simple but speedy animated videos or GIFs, PowerPoint is going to become your new best friend!
This article from BrightCarbon outlines a similar process to the Spin animation idea you mentioned. And what's nice is PowerPoint allows you to quickly set the animation to auto-reverse and adjust how much it rotates. Then you just export the animation as a GIF or video, and you can pop it into the background of your Storyline slide.
Here's a super simple example I put together in just a few minutes.
I've also attached the PowerPoint file if you want to take a closer look at how the animation was set up.
I hope this approach might work for your situation!