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Anime projects

Image 2 represents another category of Scratch projects commonly seen on the Scratch web site. Many of the scratchers create the characters forwhat amounts to animated comic strips often referred to as anime . Sometimes the characters are used to tell a story and sometimes the programmers/authors/artists are content to simply draw and display the characters.Sometimes I read about two scratchers getting together with one doing the art work and the other doing the animation programming.

Image 2. how to draw a head by dialga.

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Image 2. How to draw a head by dialga.

Image 2 shows an educational animation with instructions on how to draw the head of an anime character. Click here to view thisproject online in your browser. If you run the project and click on the green button labeled next in the upper-left corner several times in succession, the program will cycle through thesteps involved in drawing a head.

I described pandalecteur earlier as a serious artist . In the same vein, I would describe dialga who created the project shown in Image 2 as an anime artist . I'm not discrediting or indicating a preference for either artist. I am simply recognizing the different viewpoints of thetwo. Click here to view more of dialga's creations.

Game projects

As you may have guessed, many scratchers like to create games. Most of them are 2D games such as the Marble Racer game by jamie shown in Image 3 . The object of the game is to use the arrow keys to cause the marble to roll all the way around the track withoutbeing slowed down by rolling onto the grass. Click here to view the project online. Click here to see more projects by jamie .

Image 3. marble racer sbe 4000 by jamie.

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Image 3. Marble Racer SBE 4000 by jamie.

3D games

Although the mathematics involved are probably too advanced for most scratchers, a few scratchers push the envelope and attempt to make 3D games. Myobservation so far is that most of the 3D games that they make are so slow as to be extremely boring. Nonetheless, working on a 3D game in Scratch is avery educational process since Scratch doesn't provide any built-in support for doing 3D projections other than providing the necessary trigonometric functions.

A pseudo-3D animation

Image 4 shows a pseudo-3D animation of my own design. In this project, the walking sprite follows the mouse pointer. Various trickswere employed to create an illusion of perspective in order to create an illusion of 3D. Click here to view the project in your browser.

Image 4. perspective03 by dbal.

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Image 4. Perspective03 by dbal.

An animated story

Image 5 shows an animated story named Day Dream by cremeglace . In this project, the main character has a dream that goes through several scenesbefore reaching the end of the dream. The project includes music and dancing sprites. Click here to view the project in your browser.

Image 5. day dream by cremeglace.

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Image 5. Day Dream by cremeglace.

The tip of the iceberg

These five example projects are simply the tip of the iceberg in terms of the different purposes for which scratchers create projects. If you canimagine it in an animated computer program, some scratcher has probably alreadytried to do it.

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Source:  OpenStax, Teaching beginners to code. OpenStax CNX. May 27, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11498/1.20
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