CompuServe Messages

Hi Steven! First off, I appreciate your feedback on this, and your points are valid.. no one case covers all situations, and the effectiveness of any tool should be task qualified. The issues I am concerned about here related more to the psychological impact of Powerpoint vs. Animator Pro. /* The point that I want to make, especially for any lurkers on this thread, is that you should strive for the best collection of tools to get the job done and not rely on just one or two products. Your previous message seems to imply that using Animator Pro flics or 3DS output is mutually exclusive to the use of authoring or presentation packages such as HSC, Compel, and Powerpoint. Such is not the case. */ Let me clarify. For the majority of presentations Adesk is doing on the history of their products and the capabilities of their software, I believe that Animator Pro (and 3DS) could enhance the presentations far more than PP. The entire process of bullets in slides is a very antiquated method of presenting ideas which were once limited to the overhead projector with clear sheets… technology from the 50's. Yes there are times when PP (in capability) works okay, but the danger is when people recognize an all too familiar tool and become bored by its very interface. "Oh, it's the blue gradient screen again". "Oh, its the same font". "Oh, its the same graphic I used last week for presentation x.."…. in other words.. "oh, its powerpoint". /* You can use the better outlining, management, and interactive programming features of an authoring program and STILL embed high quality flics and images from both 3DS and Ani Pro. Remeber that just as resources like the Photoman and Texture Universe make Ani Pro unlimited, Ani Pro and these same resources make the presentation packages unlimited as well. The issue is a */ Embed, yes…. modify… well… ever had the same audience stay for another round? It takes practically no effort to change the presentation to make it interesting for them too. As an example, what if I ramped a red-to-black as opposed to the recognizable blue-to-black background… WOW what a difference. Colors have psychological impact too. Sure they can all share the same resources. But how limited are the apps to do things with them? How capable are they to edit the resources? I have managed to get a completely different point across about certain motion studies just because I had the ability to control the speed of the playback. /* matter of using the right tool for the right job, and every one must choose the tools that fit their way of doing things. Some of us will be like Norm Abram on the "New Yankee Workshop" and buy every power tool on the market, while others will produce masterpieces with just a pen knife. Just try not to limit your vision because of a fondness for a particular program. */ Excellent analogy, Steven. Nonetheless, I think most who watch NYW would agree that Norm can get the antique cupboard done in half the time because he knows the tools of his trade better than most carpenters. Animator Pro is a Norm's workshop. Powerpoint is more the Craftsman worktool set. 🙂 /* Finally a note on design. A few of your remarks raised a red flag for me. When desktop publishing dawned the world was inundated with a lot of really God-awful newsletters. Just because people had access to hundreds of fonts they felt that they had to use them. 35 fonts, 4 borders, and a handful of column rules does not a good design make. I see the same thing happening in the presentation market. */ Any tool has the power to be abused or used ineffectively. No doubt. But I guess what I'm trying to say in this vein is that a hammer could be used as a paintbrush if that's all the user was familiar with. If there's a fact out there about Adesk's involvement in this issue, it's that more Adesk employees who give presentations know how to use PP than ANI… and it shows. And if an integration of tools is the best approach on some presentations, rarely is their own product given credit in the presentations. Animator Pro is a fantastic presentation tool.. when was the last time you saw Adesk use it for a presentation… or are ALL Adesk presentations more geared around PP? (Does this make sense? It's kind of hard to believe that ANI wouldn't enhance ONE presentation by Adesk, yet I can't remeber ever having seen ANI used in an Adesk presentation). Now I realize that ANI's future may not be as stable as I had hoped, one of the most powerful rastermasters on the market… a product which virtually sells itself with little or not publicity or marketing efforts… something just ain't right here. /* Just because it is now possible to create spinning logos, zooming windows, and exploding bullets, it is not necessarily a good idea to use them. Especially all in one presentation. Comments such as "competing with the animated slide" and "glued to the Ani slide" are usually indicative of excessive flash */ The points being made, weak or strong, would not be the reason for "flash" and "whizbang". I understand your point here… this gets back to the idea of communicating a point effectively at all. In the same vein, bullets may be the worst thing one could use to overview company history and product lines. 🙂 /* overwhelming a weak message. Unless you are talking about a stand-alone, self-running demo; then you want the audience's attention on you and not on the slides. The slides are there to enhance your message and support your data, not steal the show. */ But they should also not be the only thing people can see in the darkness of the room when they can be read in less than 10 seconds and that's all that can be seen (if they're boring). /* Dave, I have never seen one of your presentations so I may be way off base in my previous observation. If so I appologize sincerely. */ No need, Steven… I don't take this stuff personally. If anything seems awkward about this message, it's that I'm advocating better usage of a product to it's own manufacturer. It's VERY weird. My presentations aren't incredible, but they aren't boring either. Some of Adesk's rep's presentations on R3 which started out with PP were INCREDIBLY boring… so much so that the rep realized this and scrapped the PP portion completely. This is reality. This is fact. And the Adesk reps know it. Powerpoint is already old hat. It's already recognizable. It's <default demo mode>. To the point where one hears people in the audience saying "oh god, another PP demo." You're not off base here at all. -dave