Story-Arts: How to Guide
Find out how our Story-Arts example was created
Story Arts PowerPoint Presentation

To create this Story-Arts item, a combination of photographs and scanned drawings were used. These images were then modified digitally, before being arranged and presented in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

In this how-to guide, you'll find some tips for using PowerPoint to create your Story-Arts presentation. Also included here, are some notes on how Photoshop was used to modify all of the photo images used in the presentation, but there are a number of programs that you could use for this purpose. Different programs will offer different methods, but you can these ideas below as a starting point for choosing aspects of your image to work with.

USING POWERPOINT:

GENERAL PRESENTATION
Explore ways to divide the space on each slide into sections, and ways to change perspective and composition in each slide. There is no need to use only one image per slide, although creating variety in your presentation will help to make it more dynamic, and the ways in which this can be done are limitless.  There is no need to keep it to simply one image per slide. Experiment with composition of images – less can be more, so avoid overcrowding the slide.
Taking photos and scanning in hand-drawn sketches is one way to create a presentation, but remember you can experiment with a variety of media and include digital images of these in your final PowerPoint presentation.

MUSIC/SOUND
A number of different tracks were tested before one was found that suited the story, the progression of the slides and the length of presentation. It may be a good idea to avoid music with lyrics, as the lyrics of a song can impose a strong meaning that may detract from the meaning you are trying to convey with your artwork. On the other hand, some music lyrics could also add depth to your story. Always think about whether the lyrics are really going to work for your story.

You could also include sound effects, and voice recording in your presentation. We strongly encourage you to keep narration to a minimum, as the images themselves should tell the story. Narration almost always detracts from the impact of the artwork.

For the music in the sample Story-Arts presentation, an mp3 file from iTunes was converted into a wav file, and then this was inserted as a 'sound from file' into the slide show. You can modify how long you would like the music to play by clicking on the 'Slide Show' menu > 'custom animation' > 'Effect Options' > 'Media Options' and then arranging the music to suit your presentation.

If the size of the music file exceeds a certain limit, PowerPoint will save the music file as a separate item. Because of this, you need to make sure your PowerPoint presentation's sound file limit is large enough to keep your music file as part of the presentation – your entire Story-Arts entry needs to fit into the one PowerPoint presentation. If you need to bump up the file size limit, go to:

Powerpoint > Preferences > General > 'Link sounds with file size great than  [     ] kb, and modify the kb size limit using the arrow buttons to suit your needs.

DURATION OF SLIDES
You can arrange the timing for the transition of each slide by clicking on:

Slide Show > Rehearse Timings

And then you can click manually through the slide show at the rate that you want. At the end of the slide show rehearsal, you can select the option of saving the duration of these slide transitions if you are happy what you have just rehearsed.

Or, you can click on:

Slide Show > Slide Transition

Then under 'Advance Slide... automatically after [   ] seconds'  you can change the number of seconds that you would like the current slide to remain onscreen before moving to the next slide. Following this, if you select 'Apply to All', you will make all slides appear onscreen for the same amount of time. If you select 'Apply', the number of seconds you have selected will only apply to the current slide (ie. the one you have on display).

Consider the rhythm and the phrases in the music you have chosen. Is it possible to match the slide transitions with the phrases in the music? If you can marry the images with the sound effects / music, this can lend your presentation a nice sense of harmony, with all aspects of your presentation woven together, rather than having the music stuck on as an appendage to the images.

ALTERING IMAGES DIGITALLY:

PHOTOGRAPHS
We recommend experimenting with a variety of filters and blurs, and modifying the sharpness of the image to create effects that suit your story. The possibilities really are endless, so allow yourself time to play and explore the range of effects.

BRUSH TOOL
The brush tool was used to fill in extra colour, and to add shapes onto the original image. Extra colour was used to emphasise the lips and eyes.

You can choose the shape of the brush tool that suits your purposes, for example, a hard circle, a soft-edged circle, fun shapes such as birds and stars and so on. For the second of the two 'magic hands' slides, a 'fuzzball' shaped brush, bumped it up to a very large font size, and selected a bright yellow colour from the colour palette.

You can also modify the style and strength of the colour generated by the brush tool to create a softer and subtler line.

There are a great many options for this tool – the best way is to experiment with colour, shape, and thickness to find what works for you.

ERASE TOOL
This tool, not surprisingly, was helpful in cleaning up unwanted marks on any hand-drawn images. It was used to erase smudges and alter the length / width of lines.

SATURATION
The saturation level of colour was modified to increase the intensity of the hair colour. By intensifying or draining the level of colour in your images you can created a stylised, heightened world for your story.

To modify the saturation level, Select Layer > New Adjustment Layer > and then select Saturation, although you can choose which aspect of your image you would like to modify.

SCANNING
You can scan in a variety of images/media, which you can then insert into your PowerPoint presentation as a jpeg file.

A NOTE ON STORY:
Keep your story nice and simple. You only have ten slides – this might not be the time to try out that comic strip adaptation of War and Peace! Remember to include the three basic pillars of story telling: Orientation, Complication and Resolution. Set up a world, introduce a problem or challenge, and find a way to resolve that problem/challenge. If there is a clear story the audience can follow, this will make your presentation much stronger.

Your story can be funny or sad, whimsical or solemn, anything you like – but remember, you're telling a story.

Good Luck, we hope you enjoy creating your beautiful stories.