Charts and Graphs, VBA Macros

4th of July Fireworks – an Excel animation for you

Last updated on July 4, 2014

Chandoo

To all our readers & friends from USA,

I wish you a happy, fun & safe 4th of July.

For the last 4th of July (2013), we (Jo, kids & I) were in USA. We went to Washington DC to meet up a few friends for that weekend. And we had one of the most memorable evenings of our lives when we went to national mall area in the evening to watch beautifully choreographed fireworks. Kids really loved the amazing display of fire-crackers and enthusiasm. (here is a pic, taken by Nakshu, our daughter)

While we all are back in India this time, it doesn’t mean we cant celebrate 4th of July. So I made some fireworks. In Excel of course.

Here is a little Excel animation I made for all of us.

4th of July Fireworks – Excel animation

First watch this quick demo (<15 secs)

Download the 4th of July fireworks workbook

I got the Excel fireworks idea very late in the evening. So the file is not very clean. But easy to understand and play with. Download it here.

How is this made?

Lets spare the detailed tutorial for another day. Here is a quick summary.

Lets assume a fire work goes in a straight line at an arbitrary angle between 75 to 105 degrees (90 being vertical) to a random height.
Lets assume the firework effect creates 40 spokes of a perfect circle whose radius grows as the firework explodes.
So we create a scatter plot with lines & spokes.
Thru VBA, we increase the length of line from 0% to 100%, thus creating firework shooting to sky effect.
Then, we increase the radius of circle from 0% to 100% to create firework explosion effect.
Finally we change the previous line height & circle radius back to 0% before showing next firework.
At last, we toggle the display visibility of message (“Have a fun 4th of July”)

That is all. Here are a few previous examples that detail some of these techniques.

So thats all for now. Enjoy your 4th of July weekend and lets meet Monday with something awesome.