I make it a point to use images in my Storyboard though I don’t have to. I say I do not have to create or use images in my Storyboard because, in India, Instructional Designers are not necessarily Graphic Artists.
Instructional Designers in India, do not necessarily digitize the course. Not all Instructional Designers know how to work with graphic tools and create images. There usually is a production team consisting of Graphic Designers and programmers who actually produce the e-learning course with reference to the Storyboard created by the Instructional Designers. So most often Instructional Designers do not feel the need to create images for e-learning courses.
I use images because I feel this is the best way to illustrate my strategy or ideas to the the Graphic Designers or the Production Team. I always hunt for free images on the web and use them. Most images do not actually fit my ideas. But then I feel happy that I have some image to reflect my ideas.
I find creating images for my blog posts, presentations or Storyboard quite challenging. I have done some drawing and painting on canvas and paper. But then I haven’t honed my artistic skills. I have some knowledge of Photoshop but not enough to create professional images. Above all I find the whole job creating images in Photoshop and other Graphic tools time-consuming.
Tom’s post on how to create custom characters for e-learning scenarios has really put an end to my problem of creating images. I somehow missed his earlier post on how to create your own clipart. I am glad I read both these posts today.
Soon after reading these posts I could not resist playing with the clipart in Microsoft Powerpoint.
I imagined a scenario of a teacher teaching in a class and the students getting too bored.
I found three different cliparts in Powerpoint that seemed to reflect the scenario.
I simply right-clicked on each of the images and chose Ungroup from the menu. I, of course, had to do this twice. In no time I quickly removed all unwanted portions in each of the images and put the two images together to look like this:
I know the image above is not perfect and needs to be improved. I am sure to make perfect images soon.
I am just too delighted to have learnt this trick in Powerpoint today. This is really going to help me a lot.
Thanks to Tom for all the useful information he shares in his blog.
I hope you enjoy creating images too!
Also read: What You Need to Know When Working with Grouped Clip Art
Filed under: Instructional Designing, Instructional Strategy |
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Rupa, a nice job of going beyond what you first find with the clip art.
I’ve also found it helpful to put images into storyboards, or even to sketch out very simple ones of my own if I’m going to be talking with a graphic artist to have images chosen or created.
What I found most helpful was not to try and tell the artists what I wanted to have — e.g., I need a little factory, a little crate, a truck, and a store.
Rather, I’d emphasize the concept first. “I want to show how every business has suppliers, and every business has customers. Then I want to show how each supplier has its own suppliers, and has its own customers…”
This allows the graphic artist to put her talents to work, instead of using one more image of three business people talking on mobile phones.