Forum Discussion
Changing a characters expression on a timeline
Here's my situation: I have a slide with a character and I want to synch the characters expressions to a narration. What's the best way to synch the characters pose/expression/perspective on a sing...
Rebecca Fleisch Cordeiro said:
Excellent, Joyce!
Kathie, that's a fair question. One of the things I like is that you don't have to worry about the character's position. When you copy/paste it, Storyline, like PowerPoint offsets it a bit, presumably so you can see that the paste took and so you can grab the pasted object easier. Then you need to go into the size/position settings of the initial object, note the position down, click on the pasted object(s), and modify their positions.
But I wonder if there are other advantages. I hope others weigh in.
Hi, Rebecca! 
Unfortunately, depending on what pose you pick, and what effect you want, you sometimes have to worry about the characters position in a state when you add new states to suggest movement. Most of the time you are fine but you still should always check things.
Occasionally for a character state, especially when I want them in roughly the same position, or the movement to be somewhat more natural, or a pose may be somewhat larger or smaller than others, I've had to nudge things or even expand/contract the image for the state to be sure things look somewhat natural.
Also, if you have too many characters and states on a slide or layer, the slide or layer can really slow down and become almost unresponsive. I've got a layer in a course with six characters on it, each with two states each. If I click on a character, it takes 4-8 seconds before the object gets focus. Not good.
I do think using states is the usually way to go. Katie's method also works but is harder to line up sometimes as you mentioned, but you have the advantage of being able to do more animation effects. And sometimes, in Storyline 2, when using multiple motion paths for a character, it's often better to use multiple characters, though lining things up is even a bigger pain.
