Slider - States or Layers

Hi Everyone,

I'm using Storyline 360.

I'd like to use the slider and have icons appear on the screen and stay there as the slider is moved from left to right.  I have nine icons pasted from the library. (Which btw is another issue, since the icons seem to be made of of dozens of "freeform objects" which I guess I'll have to group as and save each as a .png object??? Ugh...) 

But on to my real question.

1. Is it better to create the icons as states, where the initial state is blank, then create a "show" state where the icon appears? The set the triggers to show when the slider is moved.

OR

2. Should I create a layer, and put one icon on each individual layer then have the layers appear as the slider is moved? In this case, somehow I have to keep the slider available to the user when the new layer appears. 

Is there a best practice for this type of operation? Most of the examples and online trainings uses character states when teaching how to use sliders. When I download Storyline 2 slider examples and upgrade them to 360 the slider doesn't work at all i.e won't slide. Hours have gone by and I'm about to just give up and make this a boring slide with no interactions...your help would be MOST appreciated.

Kely