Put Plastic People in Your Infographics
Welcome to Extra Muros, a blog about matters of interest to self-directed learners. If you like what you see, please share Extra Muros with your friends. If you find Extra Muros tiresome, supercilious, or just plain wrong, please share it with your enemies.
Reader response to “Drawing with Presentation Programs” has been so positive that I have decided to write additional articles on the subject of “easy computer graphics.” This one describes a technique for creating simple silhouettes of human figures for use in diagrams and maps.
I start with photos of plastic figurines. (The one used here comes from a splendid website called The Plastic Soldier Review, and, in particular, a page dedicated to a set of 1/72-scale figurines designed by the good people at Airfix in the early 1960s.)
I then use the “instant alpha” tool on Keynote to remove the background. (You can also use the “remove background” tool on PowerPoint to do the same thing.)
If I want to turn the figures into silhouettes, I use the “enhance” tool on the “adjustments” feature of Keynote. (As before, PowerPoint uses different names to describe features that do the same thing.)
Adding shadows to the figures before turning them into silhouettes will add thickness. (As the figurines used here represent stodge-fed railway passengers of the early 1960s, there is no need for additional bulk.)
The same tool can be used to adjust the color of the figures. (The options available will depend on the original color of the figurines in question. Thus, it is possible to turn grayish-yellow figures into gray or yellow images, but not red, blue, or green ones.)
If you wish to use colors that differ greatly from those present in the original figurines, you will have to move your image into a different program. (The one that works best for me is freeware program called GIMP.)
Once you have changed the color of the silhouettes, you can return the image to your presentation program to refine the color and adjust opacity.
The biggest problem with this technique stems from the bases upon which plastic figurines of the smaller sort are usually mounted and the consequent tendency of such toys to suffer from badly molded feet. Thus, when selecting figurines for conversion into silhouettes, one of the first things that you should look at is the place where the feet connect to the base.
If the feet are suitable, you can use a program like GIMP to “free” the feet of a figurine from its base. Ideally, this involves nothing more than removing the base. In some cases, however, you will have to do a bit of fabrication.
Needless to say, you should obtain the permission of the photographer before publishing a graphic that uses of figures based upon his work.
Bookmarked - and I never bookmark. Really useful stuff.