Online Jigsaw Theatre Invitations
Create Digital Email Jigsaws to Promote Christmas Plays
Nov 5, 2007
This jigsaw was created from a canvas painting that was painted at the time the play "Santa’s Dellemma" was performed in Brisbane for Christmas 2006 as a school production. It was a short script, copyrighted and soon to be published by Terry Larson.
Digitally the image of puzzled old Santa was focused on and snapped with a camera.
How To Make An Online Jigsaw
This image was
- uploaded to Photoshop and cropped to be 400 by 300 pixels
- it was enhanced by cutting away the images around Santa, leaving only Santa himself
- the surrounds were made more Australian by choosing yellow greens and earth browns to create a kind of Australian Bush Curtain around Santa
- This image was negotiated with the class.
- Students brainstormed ideas and agreed that this was a fair representation of a Santa puzzled about how to deal with an Australian Christmas. One that is hot and sometimes wet. Where the flies swarm and the area to be traversed to deliver presents is huge. His droopy eyes show the doziness Australians often experience on hot Aussie Christmas Eve nights.
- Together through a brainstorming session it was decided that the words “Have a Very Aussie Christmas” would compliment the jigsaw card.
Adding Words
- the words “Have a Very Aussie” were placed over the top of Santa’s head using the Text Tool
- they were bent using the Warped Text Tool
- the Drop Shadow was added with the Layers Tool
- the word "Christmas" was kept horizontal and treated simply. There is a drop shadow beneath.
- It was decided to keep the card simple so that the impact of the novelty of the jigsaw puzzle card would do the trick of attracting a curious audience to the play
Teachers will see that it is easy to make an online jigsaw. The added functionality of card sending means that it can be sent all around the world as an invitation to an event. There is no expense involved in making the invitation the students do not even pay the cost of postage.
How To Make the Card
- Trim the image until it is exactly 400 x 300 pixels
- Save it once as jpeg file so that the image can be used for Promotional Literature for the play such as brochures, tickets, posters, website copy.
- Save it again in Image Ready as a web friendly file. This means that it is easier and quicker to load on the web.
- Register for an account with JigZone
- Upload your already prepared image (there will be instructions)
How To Personalise Invitations
You will now have a jigsaw that you can send out as an invitation to your play. As a literacy booster set students the task of writing as many cards as possible. Have them personalise the invitation and explain to them what personalise means. Talk to them about the difference between group mail merge and a personal invitation.
If students would like, you could take photos of the cast during a practise. Having made the official card they now know how to upload images and how to clean and save them to be used as jigsaw cards.
Each member of the cast could send out personal invitations to friends and family featuring an image of themselves on stage. More general invitations could be sent out with the entire cast and crew snapped during a scene.
If you have used jigsaws to teach in novel ways please post about it here.
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