Creating Digital Animations: Animate Stories with Scratch!(Dummies Junior)

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.