SCRATCH

APP – ONE-SPRITE ANIMATION

DESCRIPTION

Most sprites in Scratch have many frames or costumes. We will learn how to display each one one at a time creating a little animation.

STEPS

STEP 0 – NEW APPLICATION

• You need to start with a new application. So choose File > New. Of course, you need to save any previous work beforehand or it will be lost.

STEP 1 – PICK A NEW SPRITE

• Click on the button to add a new sprite. Mousing over the different sprite options allows you to see the sprite move between all its frames (cartoons). Pick any sprite that is animated.
  
  

STEP 2 – NEXT CARTOON

• In Look, find the statement Next cartoon and immediately drag it into your code area.

STEP 3 – TEST IT

• Test the statement by double clicking on it. You should see the sprite change to the next frame. Double click on the statement several times to move to the next frames.

STEP 4 – EVENT

• Right now, if you run the program, nothing happens because the statement is not associated to an event yet.
  
  Add a green flag event and place your next cartoon statement under it. Run the program.

STEP 5 – FOREVER & DELAY

• Instead of having to click on the green flag every time you want to switch frames, we want to make the switching be automatic. We do this by placing the Next costume statement inside of a forever control.
  
  
• Also, to add a small delay between frames, we use the wait (1) seconds control. We place it inside the forever control. Run the program and it should now go through all of the sprite frames over and over.

• Try different values for the delay. Maybe 0.5 is best. Maybe 0.2 or 0.1. You decide.

STEP 6 – SAVE YOUR WORK

• Save you work.

GOT EXTRA TIME?

• If you want better control of the duration of each individual frame (costume), you can do something like this:

Try it out. Note that if your sprite has 5 frames (costumes), you need 5 pairs of next costume and wait statements.