Monthly Archives: June 2025

A Look Back – 40 lines of PowerPoint Amazing Animation

During the crazy year that was 2020, we at TLC Creative had several internal design challenges. This particular challenge was to create a dynamic PowerPoint animation – using just 40 lines. The premise was simple: take five slides, integrate exactly 40 lines, and build something visually captivating and animated – in under two hours of design time. 

Making it Happen 

The rules were flexible and open to interpretation to encourage lots of creativity, while keeping the focus of the slideshow on the lines themselves. Each line could vary in color, length, position, arrangement, width, etc. All that mattered was that the 40 lines were the centerpiece of the animation! 

The result of the design team’s creations was a mesmerizing two-minute sequence, built entirely within PowerPoint, that showcased the power of simple design elements when thoughtfully animated. 

The Update 

If you go back to the original blog post, the animation from five years ago was rendered in 480p resolution (not certain why – but it was). We remastered it in full 1080p, to bring a fresh level of clarity to the line movements and transitions – along with a fun upbeat music track.

What began as a small challenge turned into a showcase of how a tool like PowerPoint can be pushed to create Adobe-style animations! 

Final Thoughts 

This project gave us a reminder that creativity thrives under constraints. Sometimes, setting a few boundaries can create the perfect environment for creative breakthroughs! 

-Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team

By |2025-06-26T07:48:49-07:00June 6th, 2025|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

New Podcast Episode Available! “Beyond 16:9: The Art and Science of Ultra-Wide Presentations”

New episode of The Presentation Podcast now available!

Ever wondered how those stunning ultra-wide presentations you see at big corporate events, concerts and trade shows come to life? In the latest episode Troy Chollar is joined by Lori Chollar for an all TLC Creative Services conversation. And the topic of the day? Ultra-wide presentations! These presentations are becoming increasingly common, as more events use LED walls along with multi-projector setups, the opportunity to use PowerPoint for content that is beyond 16:9 grows. Troy and Lori share their biggest insights when it comes to creating these kinds of templates and presentations, with many tips for setup and design in this unique presentation format! Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.

By |2025-05-30T14:15:19-07:00June 4th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

Morph is the New “Tweening”

If you’ve been designing presentations for a while, you’re already familiar with Morph transitions.  It’s the PowerPoint transition that creates animations to smoothly move objects from one slide to another. It can be a shape or color change, words and text that magically rearrange, or photos and tiles that fly in across the screen, doing whatever you tell them to. Whether it’s changing location, becoming other objects or shapes, rotating, or spinning, Morph transitions can make it happen!

Since 2016, PowerPoint has been offering this amazing feature that simplifies the old tweening process between objects. 

What is Tweening? 

For years, tweening – short for “in-betweening” – was the way to animate graphics in video, games, and presentations. The term actually goes back to the early days of hand-drawn animation.

It’s the process of creating images that go between keyframes – a keyframe being the start or end rendering of an animation. In hand-drawn animation, the main artist would draw the keyframes, and the start and end looks. Then the “inbetweener” artist would draw several frame-by-frame animations to create a smooth movement connecting the start and end looks (aka Keyframes).  

Today, the legacy term “tweening” is still in use. Adobe Flash (now Adobe Animate) adopted the term and process pre-2000. It is also used in Adobe After Effects. With Flash, the artist set the start and end keyframes, and the software accomplished the “in-between” animation frames. 

Furthermore, Flash had three different types of tweens, depending on what type of motion animation you needed.  

  • The Classic Tween: Just a basic move, scale, or rotate.  
  • The Motino Tween: Added additional motion and effects within the move, scale, or rotate.  
  • The Shape Tween: Changed one shape to another. The definition of this is literally Morph! 

What is Morphing? 

So how does PowerPoint Morph compare to tweening? Well, basically Morphing is a form of advanced tweening: a simple-to-use transition effect that animates smooth movement and transformations of objects, photos, and text between slides. 

For those with old-school Flash experience, the one thing PowerPoint’s Morph is missing is the ability to see the “in-between” frames and modify them (with additional keyframes). It’s the cost of simplification, where more of the software is empowered to make the decisions.

Essentially, with PowerPoint, the motion is smooth because Morph understands structure, whereas tweening uses numeric values. Think of it this way: Tweening says, “Move from A to B.” Morphing says, “Become B.” 

Why is Morphing the New Tweening?

Well, first, Morph just feels more natural. It’s simple to use. And it fits into presentations seamlessly. When things Morph from one shape to another, you’re not jumping from slide to slide or screen to screen; you’re watching things actually change.  

This enhances presentations because it’s easier on the brain. Sudden changes on screen can be kind of jarring and distracting. Morphing helps ease you into what’s coming next by showing the transition, not just the end result.  

The best part is that moving content with Morph just looks really cool. For PowerPoint, Morph adds a modern, professional vibe without making things overly flashy. It gives presentations a “wow” factor with minimal effort. 

Here is an example of PowerPoint Morph (aka tweening) by the TLC Creative presentation design team. Only 4 slides, each is a keyframe. Slide 1 is the start keyframe. Slide 2 is the end keyframe for the slide 1-to-2 animation, AND the start keyframe for the slide 2-to-3 animation. Slide 3 is both an end keyframe and start keyframe, and slide 4 is the end keyframe for the slide 3-to-4 animation (This is probably the most complex aspect of Morph, and all you really need to do is set up the 1st slide, adjust on the 2nd slide, set to Morph transition, done). 

By |2025-06-26T07:49:51-07:00June 2nd, 2025|Resource/Misc|
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