Creating Animation With Keynote Magic Move

Instead of using a simple transition from one slide to the next, you can use Magic Move which will animate objects from one position to another between slides. These animations can be more directly controlled by adding slides in the middle of the animation. Items that are added or removed from slides will fade in and out gracefully. These animations can be used in presentations or videos.


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So one of the most powerful features in Keynote is Magic Move. Magic Move is a transition from one side to the next where the objects are animated so they actually move. So much better than the standard thing like a dissolve or a wipe or something like that. Let me show you an example.

Say we want to show on this slide that we have three objects and this large object, a container here, and the next slide we want to show that they go into the container. So I'm going to select the slide here. I am going to duplicate the slide. Command D will do that. On the duplicate I am going to move these objects into here. So I am going to put it in there and put this one here and put this one here. Now I can have a simple transition. Go from one slide to the next. So I'll select the first slide. I'll click Animate and I'll Add an Effect, say Dissolve. This creates something that is not very exciting. I'm on this first slide. I go to the next slide and it dissolves over to it. I can do all sorts of things, some wipes and things like that.

But a much better effect would be to actually have things animate so they move into there. So I'm going to change from Dissolve and I'm going to choose Magic Move which is kind of in a category by itself. It shows you exactly what it's going to look like. So if I run it now and I go from one slide to the next you can see them move there.

Now you can do this in multiple steps too. So, for instance, if I really wanted to show these items being dropped in there I can create another duplicate here. So I'm going to duplicate this slide here. In the middle slide instead of them being in here I am going to move them up. So they should move from there to there and then drop in. I need to go and create a Magic Move for this one as well. It's done on the first slide. So you don't have to do it on the second slide. This one will move it right up there and then when I go to the next slide they drop down.

Now I can have this happen in one fluid motion if I change this Magic Move here, the one in the middle. You can see on the right I have Start Transition on Click. I'll just say do it Automatically and with no delay. So now it won't wait on this slide. So I go to the first slide here. I will advance. Take my hands off the keyboard and it will drop in automatically. So that's what I want to happen. You can also play with the Acceleration. So right now it's Ease In & Ease Out. When I have a two part here I might want to Ease In on the first one and Ease Out on the second one. That creates a more fluid one. Or I could simple say No acceleration on either one and it would move in and do the animation in a linear manner.

So you can use this for all sorts of things. Some things to pay attention to is the objects should be the same objects. So it's important to duplicate the slide so that these three objects here, when I duplicate them, are the same three objects here and the same three objects there. If I were to recreate them, create a new slide and put three new shapes on it even if they looked exactly the same, they would be different shapes and you wouldn't get this animation. So always duplicate the slides before using Magic Move.

A cool thing that Magic Move does is if an item is different, if it's new or if it's been removed, it actually just uses a fade. So if I were to put another object here like a piece of text and maybe not have that on the second one and on the third one have a new piece of text, instead of being confused by this item that is there on the first one, not on the second one, and a new item on the third one it will just fade it. So you can see the word Start there, you can see it fades out very nicely, and then the new text fades in. It works gracefully with objects that are new or have been removed from slides as well.

Of course even if you don't give presentations this kind of animation could be very valuable if you make videos because, of course, you can Export as a Movie and create a video. So if you're creating a video with some clips of yourself and things in it and you want to do an animation in the middle using shapes and text and all, you can do that in Keynote and export it as a video and then import that into iMovie to use in the middle of your movie project.

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