Storyline includes a variety of built in human “characters”. Available as “Illustrated” and “Photographic” you can select expressions and poses for each. These are powerful tools to personalize your presentations and to add implied emotional color. They provide a lot of customization options that are useful when custom or stock photography is not available.

Characters, for example, can be used as on-screen avatars for the course narration, conveying emotion during exercises, helping to give implied user feedback. A lot of different characters are provided and their uses are virtually endless.

Let’s see exactly how to supply emotion to your project using characters and hover triggers. To duplicate this effect in the workspace you will need a character with multiple states and objects with a hover trigger.

Create a slide with two rectangles and an Illustrated Character. Normally such shapes would be transparent (No Fill Color) so that the user feels as if he is clicking on something in the background image. In this example, however, there is a purple rectangle labeled “A” and an orange rectangle labeled “B”.

1. Add two states to the character. (For example, Happy and Worried.)
2. Add a state to each rectangle. (For example, hover.)
3. Create a trigger for each rectangle (as shown below.) These are the actions that occur when they are clicked or hovered over.

Once created you have an interactive slide that responds to the user. Hover over the “A” rectangle and the character looks worried. Hover over the “B” rectangle and he looks happy.

An interaction like this can be used for a wide array of exercises. A few examples include:

• Hide and seek – Items are hidden on screen and have to be searched for. The characters expression changes based on how close or far away you are from selecting the correct item.
• Multiple-choice questions – If a learner had to choose between 2 (or even more) items, the characters expression could change to positive or negative depending on the choices.