Create Simple 2D Crash Animations with PowerPoint
In today’s courtrooms, jurors expect to see dynamic presentations like what they are used to seeing on the nightly news. As our environments become increasingly dynamic, our attention spans must be shortening. We want a lot of information in a short amount of time. Animations are often a very effective way of accomplishing this dense information exchange. Unfortunately, most animation services are far too expensive for all but the most lucrative of cases. Another concern is that as an animation approaches near perfect realism, the prejudicial effect on the non-presenting party increases significantly. In short, the more real it is, the more likely a judge is to believe that the question of fact being decided by the jury will be resolved by the observation of an alternative reality. The costs of highly realistic 3D animation are such that a great risk is borne by a firm in advancing the costs of an animation creation they are unsure the judge will actually let the jury view.
An inexpensive way to create 2D animations is the employ the use of the animation functions of Microsoft’s PowerPoint. An example of such an animation that I prepared as a demonstration some years ago follows.
Copyright 2005 Remington Smith. All rights reserved.
You can download a copy of this example here
If you do not have PowerPoint, you can download a free PowerPoint Viewer from Microsoft.
Tags: crash animations, Demonstrative Exhibits, demonstratives, flash, powerpoint