Scratch

There are 3 basic forms of animation on Scratch:

1) Moving the sprites.

2) Changing the costume of the background (in effect, animating the whole stage).

3) Changing the costume of indiviual sprites.

The best effects are, of course, achieved with combinations of all 3, or at least (1) and (3).

My only real animations are:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Mayhem/119453
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Mayhem/108226
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Mayhem/96699
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Mayhem/18456

SimpleScratch wrote:

Thanks Mayhem - the money changers story type looks relatively easy to show and teach and the walking chicken was good 

Any other good, simple techniques anyone?

regards

Simon

There are a couple of other approaches that I don't believe were included in the list in the earlier post:

1.  Simply changing the size of a sprite can sometimes produce a useful animation effect.  Consider the view from a spaceship falling toward the earth.  Simply increasing the size of an earth sprite over time would give the appearance of falling toward the earth.  Moving the earth sprite around while increasing its size would give the appearance that the spacecraft is not only falling toward the earth but is also tumbling.  See the opening Starwars-style text in the animation at http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/dbal/166467

Note that this animation doesn't incorporate the tumbling concept.

2.  Switching between two different sprites with similar costumes can also be useful.  Although this is similar to simply changing costumes on a single sprite, this approach can sometimes make the code more compact.  For example, see the treatment of the sprite walking versus the sprite shrugging his shoulders at http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/dbal/166467

In this case, separating the shrugging costume out from the five walking costumes makes it possible to implement the walking portion of the animation using the next costume block in a very tight loop instead of having to uniquely specify five out of six costumes for walking and one out of six costumes for shrugging.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials:  http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free Scratch tutorials:  http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocHomeSchool.htm
Free Java/C#, etc. tutorials:  http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

SimpleScratch wrote:

@dick
Thanks for the hints and ideas! 

I like the size increase to simulate movement from back to front of stage!

regards

Simon

You might be interested in my latest creation at http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/dbal/167580

This program is a non-interactive animation. The animation tells the story of a young boy who is lost on the moon.  He wanders around trying to find his way.  As he wanders, he gets further and further from the camera.  Various animation tricks are used to create an illusion of perspective.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials:  http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free Scratch tutorials:  http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocHomeSchool.htm
Free Java/C#, etc. tutorials:  http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm