Can I offer you some advice.
If you want to make stuff move on screen you have to start somewhere and Powerpoint is where most start so as long as you're exploiting its abilities to the limit of your creativity there's no shame there. If you get bitten by the bug, you'll soon get frustrated enough with its limitations to move on to the more powerful, more complicated and therefore, more time-consuming programs.
As for the best way to approach the process of creating your finished animation.
Start with the ultimate last point
So for the mock you're creating here you would have everything on-screen at the same time. Clock, ticker, 'live', name/status aston, headline and story summary. That way you can lay it out so that you know every combination will work with the other so you don't end up shoehorning* bits that you've forgotten in at the end.
Know, understand and apply the rules of design to your ideas.
It’s as much about maths as it is art. Consistency is key if you’re going to prevent alarm bells in the part of the brain that processes what the eye sees. If you get padding, kerning or line spacing wrong or you vary it from element to element it slows down the processing because the brain likes to race ahead and make assumptions based on what it already knows. This is why people are forever seeing (or being fascinated by other people) seeing faces when there’s only the slightest hint of one... Jesus on a piece of toast, Jane MacDonald in the sprinkles on your cappuccino and so on - because we’re preprogrammed to seek out and respond favourably to the familiar. We like order and symmetry so much we actually seek it out. So, the less consistent you are, the harder the brain has to work and the more likely it is to draw attention to the flaws. Good design isn’t noticed half as much as bad design, because good design makes you feel good so you’re not looking for what’s wrong, you’re too busy feeling good.
Now you're got everything designed, you can animate everything to its starting position off-stage knowing that when it's animated back in it will work with the other elements when they arrive.
Design by committee is rarely successful.
“Make it purple, I like purple” - “green, it has to be green, purple makes me sad” - “green’s too associated with nature, make it black because it matches my outlook on life” - “my favourite colour is cheese!”. And what happens if four people want the clock in four different corners, at some point YOU have to make the decision so you might as well make them all. It's better to either collaborate with or take technical advice from someone who’s work you respect and admire. If you invite anyone who has an opinion to dictate what you produce, then the minute you chose someone else’s idea over theirs, they’re going to, at best lose interest and at worst publicly berate and try to derail the success of your co-op design. You’ll end up pleasing just one person, the loudest, most convincing. Hitler was loud and convincing, but that didn’t make him right and you wouldn’t want him in charge of your graphics at breakfast time would you?
It’s your design, so you should find it pleasing.
If you’re any good, other people will find it pleasing too. How good you are will determine the ratio of pleased to displeased, but one thing's for sure... you will NEVER please everyone.
Take care, pay attention to detail.
Rushing and not caring about the detail is not the way to succeed. Imagine if the make-up artist stuck Kate Garraway's eyelashes to her cheek and said, "I know that's wrong Kate, but I'm going to send you out in front of the public looking like that, we'll just put something like 'we know it's wrong, but we're saying it's wrong so that makes it right' under your name on the screen". Kate would be quite justified in saying, "or you could just move them into the right position" because that would be
the right
thing to do, as opposed to just
a
thing to do.
Think. As a matter of basic respect and decency, don’t use footage or headlines that refer to other people’s real tragedy and despair, you’re mocking their misery. Use fictional or lighter subject matter.
Good luck.
*a shoehorn was what people used to get their feet into shoes before laces and velcro were invented. It’s a metaphor for a ‘tight squeeze’.
