Characters

Create characters

You can also create your own characters (avatars) and upload them into the Comic Chat area. Follow the steps to create your own.

1. Character specifications

Follow the required standard in Character specifications as this is a system requirement for your character to work correctly.

• Each Comic Chat cell is 300px wide by 220px high and the characters must be sized to fit three to a cell.
• Each character must be 100px wide by 110px high. This allows for enough space in the chat 'bubble' for the message.
• The images need a transparent background for the room background to show through. The GIF format limits the use of colours in an image and allows transparency, and is often faster to download for non-photographic images.
• To hide 'jaggy' edges and to better define the character against the background, a 1 pixel white stroke needs to be added to the outer edge of the character. If a half character is used (ie. no legs) the bottom where the character intersects the cell edge should not have a white edge as it will sit on the cell border.
• A 'portrait' image is also required for the room’s participant list. This image can be any format supported by browsers (GIF, PNG or JPG) on a white background. The image needs to be 50px wide by 57px high.
• Each comic character should be less than 4k in size (usually 2k).

2. Character emotions

   Create 12 Character emotions and one portrait to represent your character.

• The images for each character have several emotions and actions. Actions are represented by postural changes to the characters body, eg. pointing, whilst emotions are represented by facial differences.
• There are twelve required images for each character, as well as one portrait to represent the character in the rooms’ users list. The required twelve character images are listed below and need to be saved with the particular name, eg. turtle-laugh.
  
  Emotions: Angry, Bored, Happy, Laugh, Sad, Scared, Shout, Shy
  Actions: Neutral, Point to Other, Point to Self, Wave
  Portrait: Your Portrait character is basically a head shot.

3. Upload your character into Comic Chat. There are different processes in place for teachers and students to upload avatars.




4. Backgroundspecifications

This is an optional step, use the Background specifications to create your own backdrop for your comic strip.

The cell background needs to be a lighter colour and/or limited detail, so as not to distract from the characters or text. When you create your background image it must be 300px wide by 220px high. It is important to follow these dimensions or you will loose part of your background.

You don't have to create your own backgrounds, choosing instead to use the bank available.