How to animate text hightlighting in Keynote

 Following the previous posts on text highlighting and drop caps, this one is about animating highlighed text moving the hassle from animation synchonization to a "advanced" use of the color gradient.

 What I want to achieve is to reveal the highlighted text as the text is read. Let's dive in:

Advanced gradient fill

If the Object List is not already open, do it  by navigating to the View  > Show Object List or press Option + Command + L. We are starting with a text field and 4 rectangles. The latter have all the same size and color. They have all also been aligned to the left.


Now, rearrange them to this order. Make should that the b.'s have the same color of the background:


Next, select the t.top shape and applied a advanced color fill with the same color of the t.bottom shape. Set the transparency of the left color to 0%:

And set the transparency of the right color to 100%:

Now add 2 new color "stops":

One with should be a copy of left color and the other a copy of the right.

In this order the opaque left color block can be adjust. Once you have reach the right spot you can move the order copy to overlap, something like this:

The blurring occurs because the two stops are not completely one on top of the other. After playing with it, this is the result I got:

The first line is done, now to the next one. There is no need to start all over. If we copy the style of the t.top shape and paste to the t.bottom shape and swap the gradient direction all we have to do is to relocate the colors. To copy the style select the t.top shape from the Object List and press Option + Command + C. Then paste this style on the t.bottom by selecting this shape and pressing Option + Command + V.  To reverse the gradient click here:

After pasting the style and reversing the gradient you should have something like this:

Move the color handles to reposition the colors:

This is my result:

Animation

The whole work invested in coloring pays of in the animation.  Select the b.top and add a move animation:

Note that there is no aceleration and the end position is just right at the end of the text block. Add the same animation to the b.bottom shape:

Set the start property to start with the previous animation and set the delay to 80% of the duration:

Finally, rearrange the objects in the Object List so that the b.s go on top of t.s:

Now for the final result:

In summary...

There is a lot of unusual techniques and workflows so let´s recap:

  • The Object List allows to select objects and rearrange them in the z-axis.
  • Advanced gradient fill lets you use multi colors and transparency with no smooth transitions.
  • Copy and Paste of styles (Option + Command  + C and  Option + Command  +V) is a time saver.
  • Partial overlapping in animations can be reached with the delay property.


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