How to make animated characters in powerpoint
By Matthew Martinez
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When you feel your Microsoft PowerPoint needs a little something extra to liven up lengthy corporate lingo, stolid terminology or long product descriptions, the software’s included animations may just do the trick – and do tricks themselves. Animations are like short little videos you can apply to individual characters. Although you may have applied animations to entire words or bullet points before, using them with individual characters requires just a bit of text box manipulation and custom crafting the animation to each letter, number or symbol.
Launch Microsoft PowerPoint and type the first character to animate in the “Click to add title” text box already included by default on the slide.
Click a corner of the text box and drag it until it is just the size of the letter instead of a long, thin box. This is optional, but will give you more room to work with multiple characters.
Click the Animations tab. Click one of the animations in the Animation portion of the ribbon. There are more animations than shown here – use the scroll bar to view them all. Note that when you click an animation, a small yellow box with a “1” appears on the slide, and in the slide deck, a shooting star appears under the slide number. These symbolize that the character is animated.
Right-click the text box and press the “Ctrl-C” keys to copy it. Click onto the PowerPoint slide and press “Ctrl-V” to paste in the copied character. Note that a small “2” in yellow appears, symbolizing the copied character has the same animation.
Highlight the copied and pasted character and type over it with a new character, such as if you’re spelling out your company name.
Click a different animation in the ribbon. PowerPoint quickly previews it as it applies the new animation. Note that the yellow box with the number “2” won’t change, even though the animation does.
Right-click and select “Paste” again. Repeat to add as many animated characters as required.
Part of PowerPoint’s charm is being able to give objects such as images, shapes, and text boxes animations, making your presentation more interactive and engaging. When animating text boxes, you can animate all the text in the box at once, or you can animate characters individually.
Animating Characters in PowerPoint
When you select a text box and give it an animation, PowerPoint treats the text box (and all contents inside) as a single object by default.
If you want to give each character a different type of animation, you’ll have to highlight each character individually and then assign the animation to it. However, if you want all of the characters or words to have the same animation, and you just want to initiate or time the animation separately, there’s an easier way.
In your PowerPoint presentation, select the text and then choose the animation you want to assign. To do so, move over to the “Animations” tab and select your desired animation in the “Animation” group. In this example, we will use the “Fly In” option.
Next, head over to the “Advanced Animation” group and select “Animation Pane.”
A pane will appear on the right-hand side. Find the animation effect assigned to the text box and double-click it.
A window will appear, giving you several advanced options for the animation. On the “Effect” tab, click the “Animate text” drop-down menu. Here, you can choose whether you want to animate by word or letter. Make your choice and then click “OK.”
Now you’ll see a preview of the animation take place. Notice that each character (or word) executes the animation individually. Repeat these steps as often as required for your presentation.
Talking avatars for PowerPoint presentations can help to make more dynamic and familiar presentations. There are many different places where we can download free avatars and characters for presentations.
Business Characters for Presentations
From Vector Characters you can download free vector characters for business presentations. The collection includes different free sets of vector characters for business that you can download and then use Illustrator or Photoshop to get each individual character. This way you can use a different character on every slide. The good point about static avatars like these is that with a single set you can then use the characters in the slides in a customized way. For the end user it will seem like you have edited the characters multiple times and prepared it careful for your slide.
This collection of avatar templates from VectorCharacters includes:
- Vector businessman reading a book
- Smiling businessman cartoon character
- Vector businessman illustration
- Amazed vector character
- Businessman cartoon character holding a pen
- Vector illustration of a businessman holding a wrench
- Vector businessman with thumbs up
- Confused cartoon character
- Businessman holding a chalkboard
- Happy businessman vector character
- Businessman illustration holding a box
- Vector character holding a certificate
- Cartoon character holding an envelope
- Smiling businessman illustration
You can download free pack of cartoon businessman characters characters for presentations from
Unfortunately the characters are not dynamic, but static instead, so if you are in the search for animated characters this won’t be the solution.
Animated Business Avatars for PowerPoint Presentations
Another alternative, while it is not free, is to use the addin from Sitepal. This SitePal PowerPoint add-in that allows creating, customizing and adding talking animated characters to your website or presentations. This way, you can narrate text from your website or presentation to grab the attention of your audience with a talking characters especially designed for your presentation or needs. This kind of interactive characters or avatars can also make your content more eye catching and attractive.
To get started, get a SitePal package, select an image from the stock avatars (or upload a photo), and record your voice. You can also use the SitePal text-to-speech functionality, which is available in multiple languages. Once the process is complete, you can get the embed code or use Flash to add the avatar to your website.
SitePal can also be used for deploying “virtual employees” to collect leads and to instruct incoming website visitors. This way, small and medium size organizations can save the cost of having to hire 24/7 support staff, as a talking avatar can easily guide visitors across the website and inform them of various packages that a business may have to offer.
Customization options include selecting everything from the clothing, background, to the hair and skin color of the animated character. With SitePal you can create characters according specific regions. For example, let’s say you have a website for Chinese visitors and another one for British visitors. In such a case you can create characters, choose backgrounds and record voices that may be more appropriate for your visitors in that region. For a demonstration of SitePal features check out the below video.
SitePal has four different packages, namely, Bronze ($9.95 per month), Silver ($19.95 per month), Gold ($39.95 per month) and Platinum ($249.95 per month). Combining SitePal with PowerPoint allows you to enhance your presentations with a nice avatar video in the slide design.
You can add animation effects to 3D graphics:
Arrive or Leave
Turntable and Swing
Duration: 58 seconds
For detailed instructions about using animation effects, see Animate text or objects.
This is a subscriber-only, Microsoft 365 feature. See Requirements below for more details.
Insert and position a 3D model as described in Get creative with 3D models.
On the Animations tab of the ribbon, select one of the 3D animation effects.
Select the animation effect you want.
On the ribbon, select Effect Options to open the menu. You can choose properties related to the Direction, Intensity, and Rotation Axis of movement.
To see the effect in action, select Preview on the ribbon.
Requirements for 3D animation effects
This is a subscriber-only, Microsoft 365 feature.
PowerPoint for Microsoft 365:
Current Channel: Version 1712 or later
Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel (Preview): Version 1803 or later
Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel: Version 1803 or later
Find your Office version
This feature works on Windows tablets. See Requirements below for more details.
Insert and position a 3D model as described in Get creative with 3D models.
On the Animations tab of the ribbon, select one of the categories of effects, such as Emphasis Effects.
The available 3D animations are at the top of the list.
Select the animation effect you want.
On the ribbon, select Effect Options Property to open the menu. You can choose properties related to the Direction, Intensity, and Rotation Axis of movement.
To see the effect in action, switch to the Slide Show tab of the ribbon and select From Current Slide.
Requirements for 3D animation effects
This feature works on Windows tablets.
PowerPoint Mobile: Version 17.9226.20751 or later
Find your Office version
PowerPoint for the web can play a 3D animation that has been inserted in another version of PowerPoint, but it doesn’t support the insertion of 3D animation effects itself.
Requirements for playback of 3D animation effects
This is a subscriber-only feature for Microsoft 365 business users.
PowerPoint for the web files stored on OneDrive for work or school or SharePoint in Microsoft 365
Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Firefox are supported
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How to Make Animated Characters in PowerPoint
Part of PowerPoint’s charm is being able to give objects such as images, shapes, and text boxes animations, making your presentation more interactive and engaging. When animating text boxes, you can animate all the text in the box at once, or you can animate characters individually.
Animating Characters in PowerPoint
When you select a text box and give it an animation, PowerPoint treats the text box (and all contents inside) as a single object by default.
If you want to give each character a different type of animation, you’ll have to highlight each character individually and then assign the animation to it. However, if you want all of the characters or words to have the same animation, and you just want to initiate or time the animation separately, there’s an easier way.
In your PowerPoint presentation, select the text and then choose the animation you want to assign. To do so, move over to the “Animations” tab and select your desired animation in the “Animation” group. In this example, we will use the “Fly In” option.
Next, head over to the “Advanced Animation” group and select “Animation Pane.”
A pane will appear on the right-hand side. Find the animation effect assigned to the text box and double-click it.
A window will appear, giving you several advanced options for the animation. On the “Effect” tab, click the “Animate text” drop-down menu. Here, you can choose whether you want to animate by word or letter. Make your choice and then click “OK.”
Now you’ll see a preview of the animation take place. Notice that each character (or word) executes the animation individually. Repeat these steps as often as required for your presentation.
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A lot of Animations and Shape Objects have been used to make this Realistic Animation in PowerPoint 2016 / 2019, so I will try to make this article short and easy.
The Girl Realistic Animation in PowerPoint Preview
Take a look into Figure 1.1, where you can see a list of Animations and Objects in the Animation Pane and Selection Pane respectively. When you will download and open the presentation you will see almost no objects on the slide as large white color rectangles (Light 7,6,5) are on top of all the other objects.
From the Selection Pane turn off the Eye button for Light 7, 6, and 5 so you may see the other objects on the slide as shown in Figure 1.2:
Whereas I think, the idea behind this tutorial is to teach the animation #PossibilitiesWithPowerPoint, not just how to create these particular effects as shown in this presentation. So, in the next section, I will briefly explain all the animations and the procedure I followed to replicate Julia Simas 3 a.m. original animation. Specifically, the Flash Once effect has been applied on various effect and with the examples given below, you will quickly grab the idea used in this animation.
Take a look at the entire animated scene in Figure 1.3:
Steps To Create Realistic Animation in PowerPoint
- The first effect in the Animation Panelist is on Hair Pony. The Pony that you can see behind the hairs has movements and we used Grow/Shrink animation for that. 105% Horizontal Growth, without Smoothness, With Auto Reverse, Duration 0.5 Seconds and Repeat Until End of Slide. So simple is that!
- For the Lightning effect; as it seems that a vehicle is passing near to the girl; we used the Flash Once animation effect. We have 10 different picture frames of Lights from 1 to 10. The objects in the Selection Pane are in descending order but the same light objects are in ascending order in the Animation Pane. Objects will appear according to the Animation Pane effects order.
To understand the concept behind this animation take a look into Figure 1.4 and Figure 1.5, where we hide all the other objects except the Light 1 to Light 10; from the Selection Pane and during the slideshow, you can see only the light effect.
In the presentation, the position of Light 1 to Light 10 is on top of each other. We move all the frames in Figure 1.5 just to showcase all the different pictures used for the light effect.
- Each Flash Once animation duration for lights is 1 Second with a compound Delay Timing of 0.10 Seconds between each light from 1 to 10. So all the light frames appear within 1 second and you see a light effect over the standing girl shown in Figure 1.2.
- We used the same technique on the Cigarette Smoke effect and Hairs. We used 13 different frames for Smoke and 10 frames for Hairs as shown in Selection Pane. Then applied the Flash Once effect with Repeat Until End of Slide.
The moral of the story is: using Flash Once animation effect, you can create realistic animations by displaying different pictures within a 1-second duration, just as you see in the Theaters (25 Frames Per Second).
- For both Left and Right eye, we used the Motion Path without Auto Reverse. The eyes move to the left and stay there. You see the eyes back to their position in the next loop only.
- We again used the Flash Once for all the frames of Face and Eye Brow objects. We also used Appear / Disappear on a few objects to show or hide them at a specific delay. Appear/Disappear works similarly as Flash Once but #ListenMicrosoft you can not apply Repeat Until End of Slide on Appear/Disappear; whereas you can not add a Delay Between Repeats when using Flash Once or any other animation. So, sometimes it is good to use Appear/Disappear when you need to show or hide objects at a specific time and for a specific time.
- The rest of the objects in the presentation are still.
As it was hard to explain each animation in any other systematic manner; so I thought of explaining all the animation in this way.
I hope you got The Teacher Point!
Watch How To Make Realistic Animation in PowerPoint Tutorial Video @Youtube #TheTeacher
The article How To Make Realistic Girl Animation also applies to the following versions:
- PowerPoint 2007
- PowerPoint 2010
- PowerPoint 2013
- PowerPoint 2016
- PowerPoint 2019
A Microsoft PowerPoint Animation Tutorial by the teacher
You’ve probably seen one of those really cool animated presentations on YouTube and thought to yourself: “Wow I want one of those animations!”
But you soon find out that it’s too expensive to have one made, and doing one yourself is just impossible because there is no tool out there that lets you do it…right?
Well, you’re wrong! Now you can Do-It-Yourself!
Once you have learned the five steps to “creating an awesome Powtoon”, you will be able to create your very own cool animated “presentation-cartoon” (Powtoon) using Powtoon‘s awesome online presentation software.
Functionally it’s as easy as creating a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, but there are a few new things that you need to consider — (after you finished reading this article please refer to our video tutorial: How To Write an Addictive Script)
So here are the steps to create an awesome 90 seconds product demo clip:
Step 1: Script
You need to create a script that describes what will happen in every “scene”.
We recommend working with the following simple guidelines to create an engaging and captivating flow:
- Which problem are you or your product addressing?
- How does the frustration manifest itself? (Expensive, labor-intensive, annoying, etc…)
- Aggravate problem (for example show what usefulness other solutions are there)
- What is your solution, what are its benefits and why is it better?
- CALL TO ACTION: Test us – Try us – Buy Us.
Remember that when reading your newly created script without pauses, 90 seconds corresponds to around 225 words! So before finalizing your script, please make sure to do a word count (and if I can give you another piece of advice: SHORTEN THE SCRIPT ONCE and then SHORTEN IT AGAIN).
Step 2: Voiceover Guide / Background Music
You need to either choose a background track for your music or record a voiceover. This means that you need an MP3 file of the TEXT PARTS of the script read out as they will appear in the Powtoon. Don’t worry, this does not have to be a professional voiceover, it can just be something basic for now, you are doing this mainly as a TIMING guide.
So you can do this yourself (record yourself in ) or use an online text to voice software. You can always hire a professional voiceover artist later to give your Powtoon a really polished sound, this can make a really big difference for a relatively small investment.
Once you have your voice-over guide, all you need to do is upload it into Powtoon and you will now be able to add the visuals to the sound.
Step 3: Dividing the Slides
Now you can start creating slides according to the script. Each slide represents a scene and an idea as outlined in the script. Try to keep your slides short, this way you can put a lot of interesting visuals in your Powtoon.
If you have a voiceover, you can make some of the words come to life by making them appear in time on the screen. You don’t need to have each word that appears in the script on the stage but rather chose important words to emphasize certain points.
Step 4: Populate the Slides
Now it’s time to add graphics, background, props, images, and characters to your slides. It’s important to convey the message together with the graphic images and as little text as possible, so the audience doesn’t have to sit there reading all the time (unless this is the effect you’re after) and doesn’t get overwhelmed with information.
For example: If the problem makes the main character sad, it is enough to display the main character in a sad pose without adding any text.
Step 5: Timing
Now you have to time it all. This is the last step and is actually one that can have a significant effect on the “professional” look and feel of your final result.
The Powtoon timeline is designed to allow you to easily adjust the appearance and timing of all the elements on the screen. You can now listen to the voiceover running in the background and make sure that all the visual elements reflect what you hear. The more accurate you get this; the more awesome the final result!
Explore two ways to become an animation maker: Tap into the power of motion capture with Adobe Character Animator to create expressive animated characters or get an intro to the traditional cartoon animator techniques of Adobe Animate.
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1. Animate in real time. When you speak, the character does too.
2. Perform as an animated cartoon. Stream to an audience as a character, and interact with live-action elements in real time.
3. Customize your characters. Control how your avatars look, talk, move, and interact.
See what you can do with Character Animator.
Animate a puppet with your webcam gestures.
When I move, you move. Learn how to link your own gestures to animation triggers and bring a character to life.
Create a basic body.
Find out how to build a simple character with animation-friendly facial features and limbs.
Control a character with triggers.
Make your characters do more than just talk. Discover how to make them blink, move expressively, and use hand gestures.
Create motion from the ground up with Adobe Animate.
Build frame-by-frame animation or design high-quality animation rigs for movement you can assign to any asset. Create footage for desktop, mobile, video games, and television.
Control every aspect of animation from storyboard to final visual effects. Make footage that can integrate with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. Whether you’re making motion graphics, 2D, or 3D animation, Animate has the tools you need to turn concepts into content.
See what you can do with Animate.
Create a 2D character animation.
Explore how to turn existing assets into a fully realized 2D animated vector character.
Auto lip-syncing.
Find out how to streamline the lip-syncing process in animation, matching your artwork of mouth poses to real sound inflections.
Import from Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator to Animate.
Animate integrates smoothly with other Creative Cloud apps. Find out how to bring motion to still images from Photoshop and Illustrator.
Take your animation further.
Bring your characters to life with the world’s best animation software.
You can add animation effects to 3D graphics:
Arrive or Leave
Turntable and Swing
Duration: 58 seconds
For detailed instructions about using animation effects, see Animate text or objects.
This is a subscriber-only, Microsoft 365 feature. See Requirements below for more details.
Insert and position a 3D model as described in Get creative with 3D models.
On the Animations tab of the ribbon, select one of the 3D animation effects.
Select the animation effect you want.
On the ribbon, select Effect Options to open the menu. You can choose properties related to the Direction, Intensity, and Rotation Axis of movement.
To see the effect in action, select Preview on the ribbon.
Requirements for 3D animation effects
This is a subscriber-only, Microsoft 365 feature.
PowerPoint for Microsoft 365:
Current Channel: Version 1712 or later
Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel (Preview): Version 1803 or later
Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel: Version 1803 or later
Find your Office version
This feature works on Windows tablets. See Requirements below for more details.
Insert and position a 3D model as described in Get creative with 3D models.
On the Animations tab of the ribbon, select one of the categories of effects, such as Emphasis Effects.
The available 3D animations are at the top of the list.
Select the animation effect you want.
On the ribbon, select Effect Options Property to open the menu. You can choose properties related to the Direction, Intensity, and Rotation Axis of movement.
To see the effect in action, switch to the Slide Show tab of the ribbon and select From Current Slide.
Requirements for 3D animation effects
This feature works on Windows tablets.
PowerPoint Mobile: Version 17.9226.20751 or later
Find your Office version
PowerPoint for the web can play a 3D animation that has been inserted in another version of PowerPoint, but it doesn’t support the insertion of 3D animation effects itself.
Requirements for playback of 3D animation effects
This is a subscriber-only feature for Microsoft 365 business users.
PowerPoint for the web files stored on OneDrive for work or school or SharePoint in Microsoft 365
Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Firefox are supported
