Drawing & Using PowerPoint Stick Figures for Presentations
Last updated on December 27th, 2024
Stick figures are a powerful way to illustrate ideas in PowerPoint presentations. Their minimalistic design and universal appeal can add a touch of clarity, insight, and even humor to your slides. Here are some useful tips and resources to help you effectively incorporate stick figures into your presentations.
1. Download Stick Figures from Office
There are bundles of stick figures that you can purchase but if you are looking for free stick figures and screen beans you can also find free stick figures for PowerPoint presentations. The first resource you should check to download stick figures and screen beans is the Official Office gallery.
One of the best providers of Stick Figures is Bit Better Corporation, that unfortunately closed its door time ago, but you can still access some of their free resources from Office website. They were a Microsoft Partner and offers clipart images like the following screen bean characters standing on each other’s shoulder.
You can download lot of different screen beans, for example screen Bean character hiding in a cloud, holding up a warning stop sign, running to make a relay handoff, playing soccer, coaching a team of screen beans
These stick figures were available in Microsoft Office and provided by A Bit Better Corporation, but unfortunately they removed it now. Previously, you can browse the collection of stick man cliparts and use any of these to draw and teach with stick figures in your presentation.
2. Learn how to draw your own Stick Figures for Presentations
Alternatively there are other resources that you should check to learn how to draw your own stick figures. This presentation from SlideShare can be really helpful and descriptive to help you draw and teach with stick figures.
Screen Beans are little stick figures, or rather bean figures (usually available as vector-based files but also in other formats just as simple animated GIF images) that you can use in PowerPoint, Word, Publisher, or other document. Other screen beans cartoons with stick people clip art characters are compact, resizable, editable, and very lovable and useful for presentations.
3. Learn more about the anatomy of a Stick Figure and draw your own stick figures
Telling stories with stick figures can help to share the message or show examples in any PowerPoint presentation using visual aid. Designing stick figures can be tricky for most presenters, but if you need to draw a figure sitting on a chair or shaking their hands, where should you put the heads? If they are doing something with their hands like shaking hands, how do you make sure their arms are the right length?
This presentation will show you a premier on the basics of drawing really great stick figures and doodles for your presentations so your next drawing, cartoon, or doodle can look awesome and fabulous.
4. Become a Clipart Surgeon
As suggested in this post form Articulate, you can become a clipart surgeon by ungrouping existing stick man or people cliparts and modifying their gestures, arms, head, eyes, to match any desired position. Tom, from Articulate’s blog also recommend to follow Sweller’s cognitive load theory to understand that graphics in your elearning course are very important and play a large role in its presentation effectiveness. However, not having the right graphics is a challenge.
5. Download Stick Figures from PresenterMedia
PresenterMedia offers a subscription so you can access thousands of PowerPoint resources including 3D figures and animated stick figures that you can use for PowerPoint in business, or any other presentation need. 3D Figures and templates from PresenterMedia comes with animations and PowerPoint templates.
These PowerPoint stick figures can help you improve your presentations and deliver your message with authenticity and style.
6. Create Stick Figures for Presentations using ChatGPT
You can create your own stick figures with AI, using for example ChatGPT. By using ChatGPT to create stick figures, you can get images like this one:
You can also try generating these images with MidJourney or other GenAI tools. Here is another example of Stick Figures created in MidJourney.
Incorporating stick figures into your PowerPoint presentations can be a game-changer. Whether you download ready-made resources, draw your own, or customize existing ones, these PowerPoint visual slides and stick figures for PowerPoint can bring your ideas to life with simplicity and impact. So, start exploring the world of stick figures for presentations today and take your slides to the next level!