SOFTWARE & TOOLS: Scratch – Input
I’m not sure I’ve got the right temperment for this kind of thing. I seem to be half-heartedly playing without any serious purpose to making the "Sprites" (characters) interact or even move around the screen.
The format of Scratch is easy, and yet challenging enough to make it a pleasant experience for the new new media animator–that is, one who is not quite ready to jump into a more elaborate program such as Flash or Storytron. I’m beginning to think that my method and manner of creative output isn’t geared towards deciding how thick I want a pen to be, how many times I want a character to walk how many steps, when I want the drums to bang, etc.
Maybe it takes a more disciplined mind. In working with this, I seem to want to just click on a character to move him, draw him to change his position, point him from here to there rather than program his directions. Storytron posed similar problems for me; I had little to no interest in the technical manipulation and would have preferred to just either write the directions out–this I believe I could do with more enthusiasm–or manually maneuver the characters and the environment.
I’ll continue playing until I come up with even 30 seconds of some sort of story and action that’s presentable–dear Lord, this program is, after all, for ages 8 and up–but my head’s just not wrapped around this method of creation.
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