Today I want to show you how you can turn yourself into a cartoon character in Microsoft PowerPoint.
This is an excellent tool that you can add to your arsenal to cheer up your audience.
Let's say for example maybe you have to share some negative news with your leadership team.
Here for example, at the Kevin Cookie Company, our revenue has been plummeting a bit recently. Here
I could throw in a cheerful cartoon character and that is guaranteed to turn that frown upside down.
Once we look at how to create a cartoon character, I'll also show you how you can build out an entire
cartoon scene using a free tool. Then we'll also look at how you can animate your cartoon scene.
All right, let's check this out. To design your very own cartoon character
in PowerPoint up on the top tabs click on insert. Right in the middle you should see an option for
get add-ins. Click on that and then search for Pixton. Make sure to add the add-in.
Once you add it, if you go back to your home tab on the far right hand side you should now see
an option for Pixton cartoon characters. Let's click into that and design our very own cartoon
character. This opens up the Pixton pane over on the right hand side. Here I'll click on get
started and first I have to choose the type. I'll pick this one right here. Next I have to
choose the color or basically the skin tone. I'll pick this one. Then I get to choose the hair.
I think this one looks like me so I'll pick that. Then I can now pick an outfit, and you all
know from watching these videos, I always wear a T-shirt, so I'll find a character with a T-shirt.
Then lastly, I can choose a pose and I have many different poses that I can choose from. I want
to insert this character on the slide with the plummeting revenue and to make management believe
we have this situation under control, I need to choose a character that looks very confident.
I think this one works so I'll click on this and this now inserts the character onto my slide. With
the character on the slide, I can now reposition it and I can resize it exactly where I want it.
Moving on to the next slide here we have a word cloud with customer feedback at the
Kevin Cookie Company, and if you look closely, the feedback really isn't all that positive.
Now our leadership team is a very visual bunch, so I'm hoping that by inserting a cartoon character
here with a very positive expression, they might overlook the specific words in the word cloud.
Here once again, I'll go up to the home tab and I'll click on Pixton. This once again opens up
the pane over on the side. Now I don't have to go through the same process of redesigning my
character. Instead I could simply go to the top and click on recent and here I can see
my recent character. When I click on that, here once again, I can see all of the different poses
and I think a good pose for this slide will be a really happy and excited character. That way
once again they overlook all that negative feedback. I think this one works really well
and here I'll position it right on the side of the word cloud. I'm not hiding any information
but hopefully we divert their attention just a little bit. I think the slide presentation is
starting to look pretty good but I still haven't addressed the elephant in the room. How are we
going to turn around the declining revenue and for this I want to build out a cartoon scene. I think
this will work a lot more effectively than just a slide with bullet points. One of my favorite free
sites for illustrations is freepik.com. You can find it right up there above and down below in the
description. Here you can download illustrations of just about anything for example let's say I
want a subway station background. Here I could simply search for it and this one looks pretty
good and maybe I want to find a food stand. I can search for that as well and this one looks pretty
nice. I'll download that as well. Now that I have all of my images, I'm ready to build out my scene.
First I'll insert the picture of the metro station as my background in PowerPoint.
Next, I'll insert the cartoon character of myself. Then I'll insert the picture of the food stall
and here you'll notice that the food stall doesn't have a transparent background and
that's no problem though, I can simply click on the image and up above I'll go to picture format.
All the way over on the left hand side there's the option to remove the background. Here I'll
use this to remove the white background. I'll also make sure I include the entire food stand.
Once all that looks good, I'll click on OK and now I have my food stand. I'll place it so it
appears in front of me. Next, I also want to make sure that I include the Kevin Cookie Company logo
on the stall so here I'll position it right on the stall and look at that, we now have a location
opened in a metro station. This is part of our strategy to turn around our revenue declines.
This way we can hit that commuter audience but of course I need a line of people
waiting at our stand so I want to insert even more cartoon characters. Once again,
I can open up Pixton and under recent I already have some other characters that I've created.
I'll go through and add a few people in line waiting for these most delicious cookies. All
right, this slide is starting to look pretty good but if I want to take my slide to the next level,
I want to add some animation to my cartoon scene and I think a good animation will be the morph
transition. Let's see how this works. Over on the left hand side where I have all of my slides,
I'll right click on the scene slide and then I'll select duplicate. So now I have two identical
copies. I'll select the first iteration and I'll take the three cartoon characters
who are waiting for cookies and I'll move them off the slide on the left. Next I'll
click on the next slide iteration. I'll go up to the top tabs and click on transition.
Within transitions, I'll select the one that says morph. It'll take the customers waiting
off the slide and then it'll morph them into the new position on the second slide. So I'll get
this nice animation effect. If you want to learn more all about the morph transition, I've included
a link to a video right up above. This is just a simple demonstration of a cool animation that you
can add. The customers now have a nice animation but what about myself selling the cookies behind
the stand. For my character, I'm going to add just a basic animation. Here I'll select my character.
Then I'll go to the top tabs and click on animations. Within animations, I'll select the
teeter animation. This will give my head a nice little shake as the customers approach the stand.
If you want to learn an in-depth tutorial on how animations work in PowerPoint,
I've included a link to a video right up above. All right, well that's how you could build your
own cartoon character in PowerPoint along with an entire scene to go along with your character.
Now hopefully management at the Kevin Cookie Company will look beyond the
present day bad results and instead they'll focus on the possibilities of the future.
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