Gifs
Gifs form an active part of the electronic daily life. In social media and websites they are posted as an easy way to display a short animation. Knowing how to make one is therefore an attractive way to join in the fun!

Why PowerPoint

PowerPoint is on virtually PC. Hence knowing how to make a gif using this software seems attractive. In addition, many people simply adore PowerPoint! ;)

Why Gifs

A gif is an easy format to play a video. It is widely supported and can be played everywhere. For example, on the webpage platform of this very site (Weebly.com) adding a movie is supported only for 'premium' accounts. Obviously, we are not going premium and we prefer to use gif files instead. Also, the inability of people to control playing the gif makes it a fun tool to troll people in a friendly way!  

Using a source gif

Naturally, you do not have to reinvent the wheel. You can look for your own preferred gif to make a custom one in PowerPoint. To the gifs one can add a ton of animation in PowerPoint. However, mind that the timing of the gif itself cannot be controlled.

Loop​

 When using a gif, select ideally one that has a nice loop. This means that the first frame is similar to the last, hence creating a beautiful seamless gif. 

Using a source movie

When using a movie (.mp4 for example) one can more easily control the time. However, unlike gifs, movies cannot be animated. Hence, choose wisely. Convert your movie into a gif if needed (see below how).

Theme​

When using different source materials, make sure the theme, style, and resolution is similar. This will create the nicest looking end result.

Resolution

The highest resolution creates the nicest looking gif. However it can also become rather bulky. This in turn increases the loading time of the webpage you put it on. Hence, if it's already a heavy page, you could opt for a lower resolution.

Source gif modification

Within a gif not too much can be changed without losing the play option. However luckily the option set transparent colour still works!

Animation of the gif​

The gif can be animated like many objects in PowerPoint. Check the button below to see more on the plethora of possibilities:

Multiple animations

One of the crucial ones is to combine multiple animations. Mind that not all can be combined, and finding the best one can be tricky.

Center of gravity in animation

The animations in PowerPoint usually start at a fixed position of the object. This is  directly related to the center of the object. You can exploit this by adding objects to your animated group. Afterwards these can be made invisible. This trick is included in the zeolite song (button) and in the several examples in the pptx:
examples.pptx
File Size: 6472 kb
File Type: pptx
Download File

Less is more

When making animations in PowerPoint one quickly learns that the transitions are often not very elegant. Try therefore to achieve a certain effect by animating the smallest number of objects.

Loop
As mentioned before, the best gifs are looped. Try therefore to make the animation end exactly how it started. The option 'reverse animation’ can be useful here.

Gif duration

Synchronizing the timing of the animation in PowerPoint and the intrinsic playing of the source gif can be hard, as the exact duration of the gif is hard to estimate. However, online tools or more advance software may be of help. 

Time is relative

To make all animated parts loop in the easiest fashion, it is easiest to use easy units of time for the lengths of the animation. The shorter (and ideally the gif) animations should fit perfectly a number of times in the longest animation. This is demonstrated in the sun earth moon animation attached above in the pptx file.

Making the movie and final gif

Simply export the animation as a movie. Then check if everything works as desired. Does it loop nicely? The final step is to convert the movie into a gif. This can be done using one of the many online tools (such as convertio.co). If you did it properly you should end up with a super awesome gif file. Hooray!

Free service sites

​Be aware that many of free online tool sites generate income with excessive advertising. This may include pop ups which can lead to malware. So let's go over the basics one more time: we did not win anything, 'it' cannot be made bigger, and there is not somebody 'nearby and in heat' waiting for us...