Creative Inventions and Robotics Animation for Scratch

Scratch: Freeware developed by MIT. Gimp: Freeware version of Photoshop. Free Online Tool for editing gif’s (crop and size). Free Online Tool for making animated gifs.

In Pixel vs Vector Graphics, we discussed the value of using a vector drawing tool to create way cool characters that can be edited and scaled relatively easily. In this animation presentation, we’ll take your character to the next dimension. Vector drawing Pixel drawing

Scaling vector drawings. Original ShrinkGrow Scaling pixel drawings. Original ShrinkGrow

Start by drawing your character. Make it big (to fit the whole screen) so you can work with details.

Copy and edit your first frame to show another flying position.

Group all the shapes, shrink them and then position them in a series of slides to test your animation. Press PAGE DOWN to sequence through the next few slides. You will see how the bird animates. With just two frames, you can get pretty cool looking animations.

Steps for animating frames in Scratch. Scale or size your frames Convert vector (PPT) to pixel (JPG) format Import jpg’s into Scratch Make backgrounds transparent Position characters in the center Write scripts to animate frames

Size your character for a Scratch stage The Scratch screen is relatively small. Only 480 x 360 pixels resolution. Most computer screens are set to 1000x800 resolution. So you have a relatively small drawing board to work with. If you want your character to maneuver around a Scratch background or stage, you will need to design your character so it looks good when scaled to fit into fairly small boxes.

Number of Animated Frames In a fancy animated film like ‘Toy Story,’ there are 24 or more frames per second to make the animated characters move very smoothly. It can be a ton of work to create many frames. Sometimes computers are smart enough to create lots of frames between a start and end frame. You will see that we can get pretty cool looking animation with just two frames in Scratch.

Preparing for Vector to Pixel Conversion Get rid of the boxes around your frames.

Saving PPT vector images to JPG pixel images 1)In Power Point: File / Save As / Select File Type => JPG 2)Save the slide as elmer-fly-right.jpg 3)Name your slides so you can easily distinguish them. This is especially important when you have many images. 4)Answer No when saving so that you save only the slide with the animated frames.

Saving PPT vector images to PNG pixel images with transparent backgrounds In Power Point 2007 or later: 1)Group your character by selecting a rectangle around all of your character parts. Right click and select ‘group.’ 2)Right click again and select, save as PNG. 3)Name your ‘png’ file descriptively and save to your desktop.

1)Launch Scratch. 2)Select the Costumes tab and Import: elmer-fly-right-1.jpg 3)Copy the imported jpg which will create your second frame: elmer-fly-right-2.jpg. 4)Edit each of the frames as described on the following pages. Import jpg’s to Scratch

1)Zoom out Import jpg’s to Scratch

1)Select the Box tool. 2)Select color white. 3)Draw a white rectangle over all but one frame. Import jpg’s to Scratch

1)Select the Paint Bucket. 2)Select the color transparent and click on all the white background areas. The white areas will turn to small white and grey squares. Import jpg’s to Scratch

1)Select the Position Box. 2)Draw a rectangle around your frame and position it in the center of the page. Alternatively, you can select ‘Set Rotation Center’ and effectively center your character. Import jpg’s to Scratch

1)If you don’t get your character exactly in the center, it may jump around when you animate it. 2)Now do exactly the same with the 2 nd frame. Import jpg’s to Scratch

1)If you want your character to go left, copy the two frames, flip them horizontally and rename them. 2)You can delete the cat costumes. Import jpg’s to Scratch

Make Elmer fly! 1)These Scripts will make Elmer fly when you press the RIGHT and LEFT ARROW keys. 2)Be sure to select no rotation or flipping. Check it out …

Wow … This is a lot of WORK!!! Brace yourself there, rookie. If you want to be a hot shot game designer or animator, you better be prepared to put in some long hours. Usually, good things don’t come easy.

Animated Feature Films: Toy Story 1.1 st big Disney 3D 2.Team Cost $30M 4.Gross $361M Lion King 1.Last big Disney 2D 2.Team Cost $45M 4.Gross $330M