Thursday, June 22, 2006

Bring Your Characters to Life--Life Size That is




Teaching Bible lessons can be greatly enhanced by creating life-size characters. It is much easier for the children to truly grasp the reality of the Bible story when they see life-like people. Just about any graphic image can be "blown" up to life size through a graphics program like Print Shop or Print Master, etc.

We try and use "meta-files" so the distortion is limited when enlarging the graphic and then we determine how large we want the graphic to be--100% is normal print size so we select 200%, 250%, 500%, etc. By selecting the "output size" on the print setup screen, we can easily make our Bible characters life-size--6ft. Roman soldiers or a 9 ft. Goliath.

A couple of years ago, our congregation purchased a Hewlett Packard Designjet 100 which accommodates paper as large as 24 inches x 36 inches. We buy card stock in that size and with 6 to 9 sheets can produce huge, life-like graphics. (The printer is constantly used by our teachers) However, the same results can be produced with normal 8 1/2 x 11 paper, though it will take many more sheets. Once the printing it done, putting the pieces of your graphic together is simply a matter of putting the puzzle together.

It does take a little time and some effort to produce these giant beauties, but the results are definitely worth it and you will be amazed at the affect it will have on your Bible class.

Dana Burk

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know how old this post is, BUT I'M SO GRATEFUL IT'S STILL AROUND!!! It is EXACTLY what I am looking for! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! For taking the time to share! The program I'm working on does not take place for several months, so I have time to create the characters I need. I also very much appreciate the photos that show how nicely the life size images come out. Again, Thank you so much!

Ivy