iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Adding Animations with Action Builds

So far, the builds you’ve seen have been one-way trips on or off the slide, but Keynote also lets you create your own custom builds called action builds to move, rotate, fade, and resize pictures without making them wander on or off the slide. With a click of the mouse, Keynote turns you into a skilled animator, making your objects skitter and whirl to any spot on the slide. You can program an object to perform multiple actions simultaneously or one at a time to create elaborate effects and trajectories. Make an object move to the corner of your slide, for example, as it also spins and grows. Or make the object travel to one side of the slide, pause, and then move along to its next station when you’re ready.

Tip

Action builds are a lot like the Magic Move transition (Magic Move Transitions). If you find yourself confusing the two, remember: action builds are for moving an object within the same slide, whereas Magic Move is for transitioning to a new slide. (Action builds also let you create more elaborate animations, as you’ll see.)

To add an action build, select the object you want to animate and then go to the Build Inspector’s Action tab and pick an action from the Effect pop-up menu: Move, Opacity, Rotate, or Scale. Keynote adds a second, transparent version of the object to your slide. This see-through clone is the Ghost of Object Future, showing you a preview of how and where the object will wind up when the action is over. The Build Inspector ...