How to Create an Animated Background for Your Work Area and Slides

Creating an animated background can dramatically enhance the visual appeal of your work area and presentations. Whether you are looking to energize your workspace with a GIF or MP4, or adding motion to a still background image in a slide, this guide will walk you through the process. We also explore how to set up an animated background for Zoom and employing tools like Nerdtool and Quartz Composer for more advanced animations.

1. Creating an Animated Background for Your Work Area

One of the easiest ways to add an animated background to your work area is by using a GIF or MP4 file. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Download an animated backdrop GIF or MP4.

Step 2: Set the backdrop in your operating system settings. Depending on your operating system (Windows, macOS, Linux), the process may vary. However, most modern operating systems allow you to set animated backgrounds through their built-in display settings.

2. Adding Motion to a Still Slide Background Image

If you prefer adding motion to a still background image in a slide presentation, follow these steps:

Step 1: Select the slide where you want to add the animated background.

Step 2: Go to Insert Pictures.

Step 3: Choose either Photo Browser or Photo from File.

Step 4: Select the picture you want and insert it. Resize the picture to fill up the slide if necessary.

Step 5: On the Picture Format tab, select Format Background.

Step 6: Click on the Animation tab and then select Background.

Step 7: A preview of your background picture will appear. Click on the parts of the picture you want to have the movement of your animated background focused on.

Step 8: When you're done selecting points of interest, click Apply.

Step 9: To see your animations in action, view the slide in Slide Show mode. If you want to edit your animations, select the background picture and repeat the Format Background and Animation process.

Note that you can add text and other content to the slides over your background images, and they will remain in place while the background moves behind them.

3. Creating an Animated Background for Zoom Meetings

If you are using Zoom for meetings, creating an animated background is a bit different than setting one for your work area or presentations. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Make a video of your desired scene. Ensure that the video is in a format that Zoom supports, such as 720p HD.

Step 2: If you don’t want the background to be too distracting, you can make it slightly out of focus.

Step 3: Make sure that the end of the video blends back into the start so that there is no sudden jump behind you as it loops.

4. Using Advanced Tools for Desktop Animations

For more advanced and custom desktop animations, you can explore tools like Nerdtool and Quartz Composer.

Nerdtool: Nerdtool is a mac os tool that allows you to create animated backgrounds using Quartz Composer. Quartz Composer is a powerful tool for creating visual effects and animations, but it takes some time to learn.

Quartz Composer: Learn to use Quartz Composer to develop a .screensaver file. After creating your screensaver file, you will need to install a Dashboard client called Wallpaper or find a command-line invocation that plays screensavers on a layer just above the desktop image but behind everything else.