Stroke/arrow animation - extending?

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Stroke/arrow animation - extending?

I drew a curved stroek using a drawing tool in keynote, and styled it as an arrow extending from one image on my slide to another.

Now my question is: is there any clever and easy way I can animate that arrow so that it seems to extend/grow from the beginning to the end (from one image on the slide to another)?

Thanks!

Message was edited by: specificus

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 15, 2009 2:26 AM

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Answer 1

Tulse

Level 5

5,812 points

Dec 15, 2009 5:38 AM in response to specificus

There is no direct way to do what you want. A workaround might be to use a combination of a slide mask and the Move animation. The principle here is that you will use the masking object to hide the arrow, and move the arrow out from behind the mask to make it appear to be growing. As long as the mask is identical to the slide background, it will not be noticeable. (To make your masking object, the easiest thing is to set the slide view in the editors to 100%, then take a screenshot of the slide, drag the resulting image onto your slide, then mask off the part where you want the arrow to be visible.)

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Answer 2

specificus Author

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Dec 15, 2009 5:40 AM in response to specificus

Thanks - kind of what I suspected...
A bit tricky in my case though, as I have a background photograph on the slide... Suppose Apple should make it one of the actions in future releases.

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Answer 3

Tulse

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5,812 points

Dec 15, 2009 6:28 AM in response to specificus

specificus wrote:
A bit tricky in my case though, as I have a background photograph on the slide

That really shouldn't make it any more difficult -- you can use the guide to snap a copy of the background photo exactly into the same place, then mask off what you don't want. The alignment should be such that your viewers will not be able to tell it actually two copies of the photo.

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Answer 4

specificus Author

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Dec 15, 2009 9:07 AM in response to Tulse

I've just tried doing that... And although I think I get what you mean, I don't think I can make it happen...

The background is a photo, and the arrow is not straight, it's almost like 1/3 of a circle (bottom part of it), so I can't see how I can move it from behind the mask (with this shape, the arrow will start "growing" from 2 ends.

Just seems like way too much work! 😉

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Answer 5

Dec 15, 2009 11:16 AM in response to specificus

The other option is to just use a Wipe Build In. You don't get the arrow head till the end, but you get the line growing at least.

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Answer 6

Tulse

Level 5

5,812 points

Dec 15, 2009 12:49 PM in response to specificus

I'm not sure what you mean by "growing from two ends". However, if your line is curved what you may want is a Rotate action instead (you may need to group your arrow with an invisible object to get the centre of rotation where you want it).

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Answer 7

specificus Author

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Dec 16, 2009 2:06 AM in response to Kelly Coull

OMG! Wipe's just done what I wanted! Thank you so very much! :))

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Answer 8

ninose

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Mar 3, 2010 2:11 PM in response to specificus

A really easy way to animate an arrow in terms of "extending" or growing it is to simply draw your line and in the shape window, select "bevel" or "arrow" as the end point and then simply throw a "write on" behavior on your line. This option is only available in Motion 3 and 4 I believe. I don't recall the bevel and arrowghead options being available in Motion 1 and 2.

But I think it's the easiest way to animate an arrow. And it doesn't matter how your line curves, the arrowhead simply travels along it at the same time that the write on behavior is revealing the line. It's one of the features I love the most about Motion: how easy it is to animate an arrow.

Hope this helps.

- Nick

Message was edited by: Nicholas Natteau1

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