Custom Characters?

Apr 17, 2013

We would like to have a series of courses that feature a specific person in our organization as the "host." I know that we could just shoot 200 poses of her and insert the shots into the course as pictures.

But is there any way that we could create a custom character set  so that out character photos appear in the "insert character menu" and our developers can see them in the character viewer? Ideally, we want our novice Storyline users to be able to choose our character and browse poses (headshot, torso, full) just as they would be able to do with purchased characters.

If it's possible to do this, in which directory would we put the photo files (JPEG or PNG)?

22 Replies
Michael Heckman

Thanks, Nicole. That thread ends with the original poster saying that she would "post soon" about how she did what I need to do. I'm hoping that somebody from Articulate will respond. 

I personally believe that it would be a smart business practice to enable this community of Storyline enthusiasts to create and share characters.  

Jerson  Campos

Saw this post and thought I'd respond.  I haven't been able to figure out how to access the photo characters, only the illustrated ones. And the current file format that the illustration uses, you can't use PNG or JPGs.  I still hoping somebody at Articulate will respond to me about how to access those photo characters.

Kim  Miller

I'd love to know the current answer to Michael's question. I really would love to have my own images insertable into the character set. I was hoping Storyline 2 would have this functionality, since it really makes it much more potent a tool for any organization to insert their own characters easily.

Katie Riggio

Hi Alisa!

You can add custom characters as images within Storyline, but there isn't a way to include them in the built-in library of characters at this time. If you have specific ones in mind, we'd love to hear more! 😊

In the interim, a few thoughts:

  • If you have Articulate 360, Content Library 360 is included with your subscription—an ever-expanding library of characters, media, and more.
  • Check out this similar conversation around creating custom characters: Import Own Characters
Alisa Funk

Hello Katie,

I really liked someone's hand drawn stick figures. I have added a few more poses and now working on the facial expressions. I can insert it as an individual picture, yes, but it character library is just SO much more convenient.

 

A bit off-topic: Same goes for the built-in template slide library. Yes, I can make a template file, but then it uploads a full set. I just would love to have an ability to add to the library my custom slide one at a time. Plus moving slides from one project to the other messes up the slide, if the player is set up smaller. Built-in library slides don't seems to suffer from that.

P.S. Please do not take it as a hard critique - I love what you guys have created. This is like if YouTube and Powerpoint had a baby.

Leslie McKerchie

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Alisa.

A personal media/asset library is a feature request idea that we've heard from other community members as well. I've added your thoughts to the report as we continue to track this request and so that we can share any updates with you here.

I wanted to share some information about how we manage these feature requests as that may be helpful.

Paul Maenen

Hi Leslie and others,

I'm a complete new member and user of articulate 360. last Monday I've got the access to the software. I started looking/following some movies and tutorials on how to use articulate 360. The first thing that came in mind was "how can I create own custom made characters?" I think it can realy make an e-learning more powerfull. We create only e-learning for our own employees, so if we can create our own characters, our employees can identify themselves much more with the e-learnings.

It would be a great update!   

Becca Levan

Hey there Paul!

Thanks for stopping by to voice why this would be beneficial to you! As Leslie mentioned, other community members have chimed in about this, so we continue to track requests, and I've added your vote to the report! So now that you're subscribed to this thread, you'll be notified of any new news!

Oh, and welcome to E-Learning Heroes! 😊

Hannah Fick

Hi Becca, 

Just want to re-iterate. Working in New Zealand and wanting our aboriginal people represented well in our online learning. Not likely to be very useful outside of NZ, so wanting to create our own characters. The OP is from 6 years ago. I understand priorities, but can you let me know how high/low priority this is for you so I know how to prioritise my own work? Thanks!

Lauren Connelly

Hi Hannah!

We are currently creating more photogenic and illustrated characters for our Content Library, but I don't have an exact timeline to share. 

Are you looking for photogenic and/or illustrated characters? If you have any examples that you'd like us to look at, feel free to attach them to this discussion. I'll be sure to share them with my team.

Hannah Fick

Hi Lauren, 

We are wanting illustrated characters as it is not appropriate to use any photos of Maori (our native people) as it is customary to not show photos once someone has passed away for a period of time (which would be hard to manage online unless we know the person has passed and we are ok to use the images). If it is illustrated then it will protect those customs. 

Some examples below:

https://tabisozai.net/en/maori/ 

https://www.twinkl.ae/resource/nz2-e-5-maui-and-the-giant-ika-powerpoint-powerpoint 

I understand that this is probably a unique request in some regards, but I know that more and more schools/government in NZ are using Articulate. 

Just food for thought regarding representing a greater diversity of people (you already have many cultures included), 

Coniqua Abdul-Malik

Just chiming in here that this would be a great feature to be able to upload characters and make them sortable like in the Character tab. I know that currently you can upload "cutout characters" from several websites, but to my knowledge they just load in as states rather than being able to view in the character window.

The present diversity is appreciated but particularly when designing for international audiences there are some gaps. This is also useful as there's an uptick in DEI trainings and the need for diverse groups of characters that may not be captured in the content library.