![helicopter view](https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Robinson_r44_astra_helicopter_view_at_kemble_arp.jpg/320px-Robinson_r44_astra_helicopter_view_at_kemble_arp.jpg)
In a staff workroom the other day, a colleague turned and asked how she could make a traffic light image image on a PowerPoint slide animate between the different colours. Nothing fancy; just to enhance the message she was trying to convey.
Creating a traffic light graphic in PowerPoint took a few moments; the different colours of the individual lights could easily be swapped using different fill colours of course. I then tried to wrangle the animation feature in PowerPoint to produce some sort semblance of the lighting sequence. Oh dear! I spent far longer than I should have … all to no avail. Confident I would have the wherewithall to bend PowerPoint to my will, I’d neglected an alternative and (if I hadn’t been fixated on PowerPoint) blindingly obvious solution – the animated GIF.
Using the graphic I’d already produced, I exported a sequence of four images, each having a different lighting mode, as GIFs. Then a quick search found Picasion, an online GIF maker. The four images were uploaded, a couple of settings were adjusted and voila – an animated GIF available to download, link to or as an embed code, all in a mere few minutes.
I guess there’s a lesson to learn there. Since the original request came from the context of PowerPoint, an application I’m intimate with , I failed to step back and consider other possibilities. I guess there’s a lot to be said for standing back and taking the helicopter view?
The other lesson to learn is never to underestimate the power of the gif!
How true sensei. How true indeed!