Introduction
Your Shape platform helps you create learning assets (called Shapes) within minutes, that you can share with other users and with your team. Thanks to a number of customization options, you can create hyper-personalized content to best fit your needs.
This article will guide you through the creation of a new Shape from a storyboard. Alternatively, you can create a Shape from a document, link or custom text, leveraging AI to extract concepts from your source, or create a Shape from scratch.
What is a storyboard?
A storyboard is an outline of the Shape structure. It includes the text for each scene and possibly search tags to help AI scout visual assets. With respect to the other source files, the Shape creation process is faster when starting from a storyboard, in that Artificial Intelligence does not create an abstract of the source. The content creation process is still AI-driven, but it gives users more control as they can define the text they need in the final content.
The supported file type for storyboards is CSV. You will be able to download a CSV template directly from your Shape platform, as explained in the following chapter.
Creating a new Shape from a storyboard
To create a new Shape from a storyboard, log into your platform, click on the New Shape button in the top right corner of the page, then select Start from Storyboard.
Start by downloading the storyboard CSV template (CSV, 1 KB) by clicking on the corresponding link. You can save the template on your device to reuse, if needed.
Shape’s Artificial Intelligence works with content in the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. If you provide sources in other languages, the text will be extracted from the Storyboard in the language you chose, but the language of the created Shape will be considered to be the default one (English).
Also remember that the maximum length of the content you can upload is 10,000 words. This limitation applies to all of the types of source and file formats supported. If your content is longer than 10,000 words, you can split it into multiple files and then upload each file separately.
Editing the storyboard template
In the Text column, add the text for each scene. In the Asset column, you can optionally add search tags to guide the AI in finding matching visuals. You can add your tags in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish. You can add multiple tags in a single cell by separating them with a comma (,).
Please note: You must use “;” as a field separator. You can add and delete rows in the CSV file, but do not change the number of columns or the column headers.
After editing the storyboard, export it as CSV and upload it by clicking on the Start from Storyboard item or by dropping it anywhere on the page.
Shape’s creation process with artificial intelligence
Once you have uploaded the storyboard file, the creation process will start. On the page that opens, you can follow the entire process. Let’s go through each one of the steps of the process:
- Extracting Text. Shape’s Artificial Intelligence starts by analyzing the storyboard you uploaded and extracting texts from it. The text displayed in each scene will be the one you typed in each cell of the Text column. As a title, Shape will automatically select the text you inserted in the cover scene, but you can change it later on.
- Finding Media. When the text is ready, Shape’s AI searches for media assets that fit with the text of each scene, and uses them as a background. Please note that assets will be applied only if you inserted search tags in the Images and Videos column. Assets (images and videos) are free from copyright and are downloaded from Pexels (opens in a new tab).
- Producing Content. In the last step, Shape combines all of the info retrieved in the previous steps, producing a sequence of scenes resulting in a learning asset.
The creation process may need a few minutes to complete.
If you want to stop the creation process, you are free to do it at any time by pressing the Stop Creation Process button.
You don't need to wait until the creation process is completed, you can close the creation panel using the x icon whenever you want. The process will continue in the background and you can check it from the homepage.
You will also find the Shape just created in the All Shapes and in the Created by me tabs on the homepage, in Draft status. Now, you can preview, edit and publish your content. Learn more about editing your content and publishing it.