Scratch Animation
Beginner
40 mins
Teacher/Student led
What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC
iPad/Tablet

Animating Characters: Moving and Changing Costumes

In this step-by-step lesson, you'll animate a character, making them dance by changing their costume every second. You'll add a character, set a stage background, use multiple costumes for animation, control the dance speed, and test your animation. You'll also have the opportunity to add more characters for a bigger dance party.
Learning Goals Learning Outcomes

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    1 - Introduction

    In this lesson, we’re going to create a fun dance animation! We’ll get a character to dance on a stage by changing his costume every second. By the end of the lesson, you’ll have your very own dance party animation!

    2 - Create a Scratch Project

    Let's start by creating a new Scratch project. First, go to the Scratch website by clicking here.

    Once you're on the Scratch website, click on 'Create' to start a new project. You will see a cat sprite on the screen. We don't need the cat for this project, so let's remove it. 


    3 - Add your Character

    Let’s start by adding the a character to your project. Click on the sprite library and find a character with lots of costumes.

    We recommend Anina Dance, Ballerina, Cassy Dance or Champ99.

    Once you’ve selected your character, they’ll appear on your stage.

    4 - Set the Scene

    To make the dance more exciting, we’re going to add a stage background. Click on the background icon and choose a stage background from the library. 

    Click on the 'Choose a Backdrop' button at the bottom-right of the screen. This will open the backdrop library. Scroll down until you find the Concert backdrop and click on it. You will see that the stage now looks like a dance .

    This will give our character a cool place to show off his moves!


    5 - Changing Costumes

    Some characters have multiple costumes. You can find these by clicking the 'Costumes' tab next to the 'Coding' tab in the top left hand of your screen.

    We’re going to use those costumes to create the animation.

    Begin by dragging the "when green flag clicked" block from the Events section into the coding area. Drag the "next costume" block from the Looks section and place it under the green flag block. This block will tell your sprite to switch to the next costume.

    when green flag clicked next costume

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    Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is available for free at https://scratch.mit.edu
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