Hypercompendia

Almost had a quickie (10-second) "story" ready to post–or as ready as I’m willing to work on it, after seeing the Alice program.  Then I changed one little thing and now the two characters are out of sync in their interaction. 

The problem I’m having with Scratch is that I’m not awed by the graphics–even my own–enough to put the effort into it.  One of the minor inconveniences is that you work on one character at a time so that synchronization of the interaction is not an easy thing.  There may be a way of opening both screens (one shows up as a character is being "coded") so that five seconds or five steps shows you where each character is at any point. 

Another thing I’ve likely screwed up myself is in making changes to the costume (from short skirt to farmer overalls) in the four costumes of one character, I can’t seem to start the character off in the opening with the proper stance.  Remember, each "costume" is really a change of not clothing usually, but positioning.

As I’ve selected one of the Scratch programs music loops, the action seems to jerk at the point where the music ends and begins anew.

After going through some of the user examples on the MIT Scratch website, I’m not as embarrassed to put mine up–it’s likely not the very worst up there.  As long as I can get it to work properly.

I’m rather anxious to play with Alice.  Though in the back of my mind something’s bothering me already about it:  you’d be using characters and settings and items that are already created and provided by someone else. I’m learning to be a team player but this hits me differently, sort of like a paint-by-numbers sense of doing that taints the creativity aspect for me and dulls my enthusiasm.

Then again, when I see how much time I’ve wasted spent in drawing my own clunky figures for Scratch when I could have been playing learning the program and exploring its possibilities,  I know I must learn to focus on the program instead of my own natural instincts.