Image for Stick Figure Clip Art Image for Plot Setting

If y'all follow Sweller'due south cognitive load theory, then y'all understand that the graphics in your elearning course are very important and play a large role in its effectiveness. Even so, not having the right graphics is a challenge.

If yous're like me, you lot're on a limited budget and you just can't go purchase custom graphics whenever you like. That means you lot're probably stuck using the standard clip fine art that comes with PowerPoint.

Later just a few projects you cycle through all of the practiced clip fine art and you're forced to employ the clowns and puppies. While your five-year-sometime kid might like your choice of images, yous'll find that many in your organization are not particularly fond of clowns or puppies. If simply you had known that before you started.

How Practice I Get the Graphics I Need?

If yous want custom graphics, you can rent someone (although you might want to read this before working with a graphic designer) or you can make them yourself. For the moment, I am assuming that y'all have no coin and you want to make the graphics yourself.

In this case, I recommend two options: one) create your own drawings or 2) modify existing clip art.

[Note: Microsoft stopped providing clip art but you can nonetheless use the same ideas by ungrouping vector images in PowerPoint.]

Option 1: Stick with your skills and draw your own graphics

Here'due south a generic prototype that is easy to create.

With minor tweaks, you can apply the same image over and over once more, each time telling a different story. Equally y'all tin meet below, information technology doesn't take much to make the images hateful different things.

Nonetheless, there is a very slight possibility that many in your organisation will not appreciate your graphic art skills. In that case, I suggest trying the second option.

Option 2: Modify existing prune art

Here's your challenge. Yous want an image of a lady presenting some information to her team. All the same, yous cannot find the right image. In the following case, you're going to learn to accept two split prune fine art images and combine them to make the image you need.

Become a prune fine art surgeon.
Without going into technical details, nearly prune art is a series of grouped images. That means you lot can ungroup the clip art and pull out or add the elements you need.

Just correct-click on the image and select ungroup. Sometimes, you lot have to do it twice. You should encounter something like this.

One time yous ungroup, you can pull out the things you don't demand. Yous tin also add items to change the prune art and make information technology something new. In this case, we're going to combine the 2 images and make information technology look like the woman is presenting to the group at the tabular array.

[Note: Microsoft stopped providing clip art but you can withal use the same ideas by ungrouping vector images in PowerPoint.]

1. Ungroup the images.
2. Start with the showtime image. Take out the elements you don't want.
3. Select the unabridged prototype and regroup information technology.
4. Practise the same for the next epitome.
5. Combine the elements from paradigm ane with image ii to make the desired image.
6. Select the entire epitome and regroup information technology to brand a unmarried prototype.
7. If yous desire to use the paradigm elsewhere, go ahead and save information technology by right clicking on information technology and selecting "relieve image every bit" and choose the format you lot prefer. I recommend .emf considering you'll retain the image transparency and vector. However, you'll see that there are many formats from which to choose.

If you lot look at the image yous'll observe that I did a few things.

• I took i of the people out of the team paradigm. She was facing the wrong direction.
• I flipped the team image so that it looked like they were facing the presenter.
• The presenter'south shirt was white, so I changed the colour.
• I got rid of the backgrounds and the presenter's tabular array to make the image less cluttered.
• I layered the presenter backside the table to give the image a lilliputian depth.
• I changed the content on her flip chart, taking her from boring corporate drone to brilliant elearning consultant.

Now it's your plow to do doing this. Recall, the only limitation is your creativity. If your people need hard hats, find a difficult hat prototype and add it to the clip art. If you lot need multiple ethnicities, modify the hair and peel colour. The possibilities are endless.

Here are three quick tips.

• Create a piece of work slide. I build a lot of my elearning courses in PowerPoint and publish with Articulate Presenter. I tend to create the images I demand on the wing. Because of this, I like to use a blank slide as a work area. I'll movement the clip art to the slide, go far big and and so take information technology apart. Once I am done, I copy and paste the prototype to the real slide. This mode I don't accidentally, mess up my content slides.
• Control the ataxia. The ungrouped elements that brand upwardly the epitome are layered. Sometimes, information technology's not easy to get to what you want. What I do is make a series of indistinguishable images and delete what I don't want. Then I pull the individual pieces together and regroup the epitome.
• Create mini groupings. I detect information technology easier to take hold of a role of the image and create a mini group rather than work on the whole image. This fashion you only accept to work with a few mini groups rather than hundreds of little pieces.

By ungrouping and modifying existing clip fine art, you lot have the ability to make custom images to fit the needs of your elearning course. It's inexpensive and, once you become a handle on it, pretty quick to exercise. In fact, outside of the original stick figures, I congenital all of the graphics for this post in PowerPoint. It only took almost five minutes to build the presenter image for this demo.

I'k interested in seeing some before and subsequently images. Feel free to ship them my manner. When I become enough, I'll post them for others to run across what can be done.

In the next post, we'll look at how to use prototype styles so that y'all have consequent graphics to use throughout your elearning course.

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Source: https://blogs.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/little-known-ways-to-create-your-own-graphics-using-powerpoint/