Tween Activity: Make a Personalised Fantasy Picture

As my children get older, I realise there aren’t many activity ideas for the tween/teen age.  I often think and look for fun activities for my older children, however I also find with some kids (like Miss 10) it’s simply a matter of facilitating their interests.

Miss 10 loves drama, stop animation and generally creating stuff, and one afternoon, she asked if she could create a fantasy scene.  The only thing I did here was take the picture.  It’s such a simple process that kids can achieve the end result is fantastic.

Great for

• Birthday party invitations
• Posters for the bedroom wall
• Christmas cards
• Fun notes for friends
• Memes
• Just for fun
• School projects

Tips on taking the photograph

When taking a photograph to use in a fantasy scene, there area few tips to keep in mind.

• It’s a good idea for the photographer to take the picture straight on so the body is in proportion.  For example, if an adult were taking a picture of a child from a standing position, they would be taking it from an angle (like the second image below).  This would make the top half of the body bigger and the legs smaller and it will look slightly out of proportion in the scene. However, if the photographer crouches down so the camera is in line with the subject, the body will be in proportion.

• Try and keep the background as clear as possible. This makes it easy for editing.  For this instance, the pale shed wall works well.  You can even make up a make-shift background with a sheet!
• Think about what sort of scene you want to create.  My daughter dressed in a Frozen inspired dress and did some dreamy poses for this fantasy scene.
• Think about how you could use your arms and legs in a fantasy picture, like holding something in your hands or kicking a ball etc.

Step 1

Insert the picture into a blank Powerpoint frame.

Step 2

Double click the picture so the picture tools appear and click ‘Remove Background’  

Step 3

First adjust the size of the box to fit as closely around your subject as possible.  Don’t worry if there are parts that are not selected.  You can fix that in the next step.

Step 4

To adjust any areas that need to be removed, click on the ‘mark areas to remove’ button and simply draw a line over the area you want to remove and the program will work it out.  Depending on which Powerpoint version you are using, there might  not be a ‘mark areas to remove’ button but the process is the same (ie. you just draw lines over the areas to remove). Continue drawing lines over the areas to remove and fine tune the image.

Step 5

Then it’s a simple matter of clicking ‘accept changes’ or enter in some Powerpoint versions.

Step 6

The next step is the fun part.  Find a background (in ‘insert clipart’, your own pics or a pic sourced elsewhere) and insert it into the powerpoint.  Adjust the picture and send to the back by right clicking and pressing ‘send to back’.

Step 7

Add other fun additions (like a snowflake here). Text, accents and other characters look great! 

Save as Picture

tSave he completed picture as an image so you can use it in many different ways, like birthday party invitations, posters for the wall, Christmas cards or for fun notes for friends. To save all the elements into one picture, drag the mouse over the entire Powerponit area to select all the elements. Then carefully right click over one of the selected lines and pick ‘save as picture’.  Another way to do this is to go to File –> Save as picture –> pick .jpg –> name and save.

Video Tutorial

Here’s a quick run through Miss 10 did on how easy it is to do this.

Other editing ideas

Once you have the picture saved in image format, you can use online photo editing programs like Canva and PicMonkey to add even more fun elements.

Other Scenes

It’s so easy to use the same image in many different fun scenes. A fun activity for tweens to share with their friends or decoration their bedroom.

More

How to make a simple animation on Powerpoint

Make a 3D Fantasy Scene in a Jar