Forum Discussion
Modifying characters
Hello Heros!
I have a client that wants to use an illustrated character in our storyline module to represent her. The only problem is that she is white with long black hair. There is no character like this in the character pack. Can I somehow access the source files for the characters? I could do a quick skin tone change to get what we need.
cynthia
- MeryemMCommunity Member
Arturo Hernandez said:
Yes I need to change the characters clothes color, let me know asap
Arturo,
Someone (possibly Dave?) did a tutorial on this a few months back.
You can change the appearance of a character with just a little bit of work if you have powerpoint. I'm using PPT 2010 for this.
- First insert the character you want to change on a Storyline slide. Then right click and "save as picture." Save it as an EMF file.
- Now, open powerpoint and insert the .emf file.
- Select it and ungroup it. When Ppt asks, YES you want to ungroup it.
- Now, select it again and ungroup it again.
- After the 2nd ungroup, look at your selection pane. There is one group with over a hundred shapes, and then two other images that are not grouped. Those two are little strips across the neck, one colored and one white. Get rid of them. They'll just cause you trouble.
- Now, ungroup a third time.
- Finally you get to do the painstaking work of clicking on the hundred little pieces and recoloring them.
I've attached a file in which I recolored one character to have black hair and light skin. Also her clothes are now a new color.
- LauraBlair-ac6bCommunity Member
Hi! Thanks so much for the technique. I got my character's top changed (she needed to look more Chef-like). But now she isn't saving right. I played around with this before and it saved fine but I didn't understand that neck thing so I needed to do again. First one saved great, second one...see attached.
- ArturoHernandezCommunity Member
Hi!
Many thx for your suggestion, however, after the several ungroupings and successfully changing the color of the coat (which is my objective), I then grouped again and pasted to my Storyline project at which time I saw jagged edges on my character and a white rectangle surrounding it. Thinking I had made a mistake somewhere, I copied the samples you had made and pasted them in SL at which time I also saw ragged edges and a white rectangle around your modified character
Is there a means of:
a) Improving the quality as it degraded a bit
b) Getting rid of the jagged edges
c) Eliminating the white rectangle
Also, is there a way to import the modified character into the SL character inventory so I can use it from there?
Tons of thanks . . . . again
Arturo
- SimonPerkinsCommunity Member
Arturo, did you save your edited PowerPoint image as a JPG? If so, this will remove the transparency and render the background white. Have another go and save as EMF.
- SimonPerkinsCommunity Member
I must say I haven't really given much thought to editing the stock characters, so a big thanks to Meryem for posting up those instructions. Works a treat
- JudithBlackb538Community Member
Thanks so much, Meryem. This is a great idea!
- JudithBlackb538Community Member
The characters sometimes seem too "uptown" for my application, so I modified one to remove some of the makeup, give her a few more pounds, double-chin, etc. In other words, make her look more like me!
Found making modifications easier when I enlarged my view to 200% so I could see the individual pieces. Somehow lost the shadow behind her, though.
- HeidiGreenCommunity Member
Meryam, this is a great technique! Thanks so much for sharing it. You are right that it is painstaking, but it works!
I am a big supporting of adding this feature to the SL toolkit. It would make the avatars much more appealing to my clients. I do a lot of diversity work with my instructional design efforts, so being able to change avatars around is really valuable.
Thanks!
- ArturoHernandezCommunity Member
Meryam, dumb question, where do you make the changes? do you copy and paste the characters in powerpoint, or photoshop or what?, and then can you import them into the Storyline database?
thx
Arturo
- MeryemMCommunity Member
Arturo Hernandez said:
Meryam, dumb question, where do you make the changes? do you copy and paste the characters in powerpoint, or photoshop or what?, and then can you import them into the Storyline database?
Where do I make the changes? Do you mean after the steps listed above?
You cannot import the changes back into the Storyline database. But once I have edited the character in powerpoint, I group all the shapes again, and then right click and copy it. Then paste into Storyline onto a slide. Or right-click and "save as image." Then import into SL.
I haven't done this yet but I think it would be possible to use the color schemes in powerpoint to change the character's colors, and then switch out to new colors by simply changing the color scheme. Once the initial work has been done one ought to be able to leverage that work to simpler changes in the future.
- RebeccaFleischCCommunity Member
Hi,
Just thought I'd affirm what MeryemM said above re:
'I haven't done this yet but I think it would be possible to use the color schemes in powerpoint to change the character's colors, and then switch out to new colors by simply changing the color scheme."
I've been using this ungrouping and swapping colors out approach in PowerPoint for many years, and yes, changing the color scheme does change the colors after you've swapped the colors out once.