The easy way to start animating today! Creating Digital Animations is your ticket to learning animation! Learn how to animate your very own characters using Scratch—the free multimedia tool that lets you create interactive stories, games, and animations. Designed specifically for kids aged seven and up, this easy-to-follow, full-color guide introduces you to important game design concepts through three simple projects. Step-by-step instructions walk you through the four major phases of animation design, showing you how to turn your idea into a real animation with sound effects and more! You'll work just like the pros as you sketch out your main idea, add your own details, and develop a complete, workable character from scratch.
If you're curious about coding, animation is the perfect place to start exploring. The Scratch platform doesn't require an actual programming language, but it gets you used to thinking like a programmer while you develop your very own animation. Short on rules but big on fun, this book is your friendly animation coach to get you started on the right foot.
- Use stick figures to design your characters' 'bones'
- Flesh out your design and animate movements
- Create scenes and background locations
- Add sound to take your animation to the next level
Animation is fun! Building your own characters is exciting! And putting the finishing touches on your animation project shows you just how much you can learn while you play. Coding is a valuable skill that will serve you throughout school and beyond, and this book teaches you the basics in a way that leaves you hungry for more. Where will you take your new animation skills next? Creating Digital Animations takes you on the first steps of your journey to wherever you want to go!
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1
About Scratch 1
About This Book 2
Icons Used in This Book 3
Access Scratch 3
Create online account 3
Use Scratch offline 4
Project 1: Animation Essentials 8
Draw Your First Character 8
Create project 9
Draw body parts 9
Sculpt the body with the Reshape tool 10
Adjust the thickness of multiple lines 11
Animate the Stick Figure 12
Draw a simple backdrop 13
Adjust movement against the backdrop 14
Putting the jump in jacks 15
Animate with Code Blocks 17
Bring Humor to Your Animation 20
Add Stick Man's Best Friend 20
Modify parts to create a new character 21
Develop your humorous story 22
Walk Like a Man 23
Rotate parts with the Select tool 24
Animate the Dog 26
Add code to animate the stick dog 26
Animate tail wagging 27
Talk Like a Man 28
Project 2: Animate Great Characters 31
Keep It Simple, Stupid 31
Getting a Head Start 33
Create a new project 34
Paint a new sprite 34
Quick hairstyling 35
Open wide 36
Give 'em a nose job 37
A Little Body Work 37
Add simple legs 38
Arming your characters 39
Apply Finishing Touches 40
It's Okay to Clone Scratch People 41
From Dead Skin to Furry Beast 41
Fangs Make the Beast 43
Undress the Beast 44
Strike a Pose 45
Add Finishing Touches 45
Create a Third Character 47
From zombie girl to bland boy 48
Design character clothing 50
Tweak facial features 50
Add a set of teeth 51
Posing clothed figures 52
Assembling Your Cast 52
Project 3: Location, Location, Location 54
Planning Animation Scenes 54
Design an Interior Scene 55
Make Scenes More Immersive 59
Change a backdrop into a sprite 60
Design see-through windows 60
Build your own furniture 63
Design an Exterior Scene 66
Draw scenes with perspective 69
Scale characters inside a scene 71
Project 4: Sounds Good to Me 74
That's What He Said 74
Write dialogue for your characters 75
Record Dialogue in Scratch 76
Find the Record button 77
Edit Audio Clips 80
Trim Beginning of Sound 81
Use sound editing effects 82
Play Sound with Code Blocks 83
Animate Character Speech 84
Mouthing the words 85
Easy lip-synching 86
Achieve more realistic lip-synching 87
Create custom phoneme costumes 90
Switch costumes to match phonemes 91
Project 5: Lights, Camera, Action! 95
(Not) Starting from Scratch 95
Create a night scene 95
Turn out the lights 98
Camera (or What Do I Focus On?) 101
Increase the costume size 101
Create a back view of characters 103
Create a side view of characters 104
Action! (or Let's Get the Story@Moving) 104
Animate sprite entering the scene 105
Add a (slightly) more realistic walk 105
Broadcast Animation Messages 106
Send a broadcast message 106
Receive a broadcast message 107
Switch between Animation Scenes 108
And Cut! 111
Author Notes 112
Share Your Scratch Projects in the Scratch Online Community 112
Share project from the online Scratch editor 113
Share project from the offline Scratch editor 114
Broadcast Scratch Animation on Any Website 114
Record/Export Scratch Videos 115
Export Scratch Graphics to Other Applications 117
About the Author :
Derek Breen is a former designer for the Education Arcade at MIT and teaching fellow in the Digital Media Arts and Instructional Design program at Harvard Extension School. He is the author of Scratch For Kids For Dummies.
