When Rod Stewart’s tweet appeared on my timeline I couldn’t resist dropping everything to make an interactive version of these paper dolls  in Articulate Storyline.

Dragging a costume onto Mr Stewart switches to a new state of his image, wearing that particular stunning outfit. It also hides the outfit you dropped.

So far I haven’t worked out a way to bump the previously-worn out fit back off him, and as far as I can tell it’s a limitation of the software. What I wanted to do was send the costume that had just been replaced back to its original position, and make it visible and draggable again.

I had another try and got this working, using a variable for the current outfit, and triggers to show the previous outfit and make it follow a motion path back to the other side of the screen.

The Undie Of Resetting which resets the whole slide can now appear at all times.

The dolls are from a Swedish magazine called Året Runt (meaning All Year Around in English) which is a weekly women’s and family magazine published in Malmö, Sweden. The paper dolls that used to be included are a nostalgic favourite for many fans!

An interactive version of the diagram on Te Ara’s Rocky Shore page, made in Articulate Storyline 360. I made a basic wave animated gif in photoshop for the water level to make it a little bit dynamic.

I had a bit of back-and-forth between using layers or states for the water level and the zone labels. I found layers would appear over the top of the buoy slider, preventing it working. In the end, I used items with states for the zone labels, water levels, and the labels on the sealife.

Background audio and sound effects from FreeSound.org:

• Rollover audio on the sea life
• Splash audio on buoy
• Background seascape

Straightforward Storyline dial interaction. I followed the information here to make the dial work for a continuous repeating cycle.

A draggy timeline of film and television Holmeses, from the sublime to the absurd.

Apologies to excluded Watsons; you are also very important, but I’m practicing software right now.

I love Don McGlashan’s songs, and growing up in Auckland, I always appreciated it when I knew the places being mentioned in them. (Forrest Hill! That’s on my slow bus route to the city!)

Here’s a little drag and drop exercise with five of his songs that are set in Auckland. (I may have to expand for another one to include Opononi, Christchurch, New York, London, and the Nakhon Pathom Province of Thailand, though I anticipate there may be some minor issues with scale, there)

Match them up correctly and you get to hear a snippet of the song where the place-name is mentioned.

“You should learn how to use Storyline, Rosie”

“Yep, yep, I know”

“How about make a small eLearning module to Demonstrate Your Abilities?”

“Sure thing!”

“NOT LIKE THAT”

Or, in which I learnt how to use Storyline by making a small product knowledge (?) module on Interesting Victorian Beverage Technology.  Maybe it’ll come in handy in a pub quiz.

Click here to launch the module and learn more than you ever wanted to know about the semi-explosive cousin of both the classic baking soda volcano, and the modern Sodastream on your bench.

Storyline features I used:

• Text-to-speech
• Characters
• Quiz questions
• Freeform slides
• Drag n drop
• Shape animations
• Layers & states
• Scrolly text windows
• Taggy markers
• Player/Custom menu