Hypercompendia

I laughed out loud.  I’m still giggling with a silly-ass grin on my face.

I decided to change the characters in my world as the first row of loops begins to macrame into a story.  Hadn’t realized that there was a grouping of people available beyond the fairies, so I imported Socrates and a mad scientist. Since the fantasy figure LichenZenspider didn’t quite fit the scenario forming in my mind, I deleted him.

Well.  He jerked his head around to stare out of the screen at me, glared, spun around and disappeared!

I love it!

There’s also, I believe, base characters of a female and male that look to be something that can be shaped and moulded into more original characters.  These are available for download from the Alice site, as are many more objects and environments, through the courtesty of users willing to share their creations.

I don’t know if I’ll be any more successful at this animation program, but it’s certainly a lot more interesting if only because the graphics are a hundred percent nicer than what was available with the Scratch program.  When it looks exciting, it excites and inspires.

Enough so, I think, that I’ll overcome my repugnance over using their characters and backgrounds–this feeling comes only from a sense of "cheating" because its not my original work–because they’re so much better than anything I could possibly come up with.  Besides, this is only another learning experience and I’m anxious to get the world built and inhabited and, and, and…moving!

As a matter of fact, I’ve already got a simple setting, some objects and a character in place.  I added text for a title and I’ll start some simple manipulations in the next couple days.

It’s gotta be me; look at what someone else was able to do with the program.

It’s horrendous and hokey, but just wanted to finish it up and while I solved some of the little glitches that came up, I still don’t have the music loop running throughout as it should.  Also didn’t bother getting more creative with it since I wasted so much time on drawing the characters and found that I had to keep re-drawing them because for some reason, the pixel arrangement would change  and they’d look even worse than what I’d drawn in the "paint" program within the software.

With so much going wrong–and I admit that most if it was my fault–I just couldn’t see spending more time here.  If used in a high school (they say college) level for basic programming, I would think that no more than a class or two would be necessary for most students in an environment where teamwork would speed up the learning process. 

On the other hand, if the graphics were better, (I used my own backyard photo as a background and the two characters with several costumes), there were some projects on the site that showed a much wider range of creative output and possibility.

This is most annoying: even after making up my mind to not bother with indepth exploration of the program, there is one little glitch that’s keeping me from moving on.  Normally I love problem-solving and will dedicate effort in time and mental energy to see all sides, try all things, research for answers.  This one just seems to be something I may have caused by improper maneuvering within the program and therefore not covered by the program coding.

One thing I might try to work this through is to export the two characters into a new file and start them off fresh.

In the meantime, the cloud of "for 8 year-olds and up" hangs heavy just above my head, dripping rain–no wait, that’s the sweat of embarrassed nerves.

Tee-hee.  I just made a bunny squash a cellphone in the Alice Software Tutorial.

This is truly one of the best prepared tutorials that I’ve cracked open.  It is step by step, comprehensive, makes sense, and completely interactive so that instead of merely watching the cursor click around the screen, you get to really do it.  This makes all the difference in the world in the learning process, especially to one like me who tends to scan instructions quickly with a yeah, yeah, I know attitude when in truth, I won’t remember a thing I’ve learned from watching.

It’s dopey, but I’m not concerned with that.  What I’m working on now since I’ve gotten back into it is a glitch that prevents the project from starting at the beginning.  In other words, where the characters leave off seems to be where they start if played again.

If I can figure that one out, I should be ready to wrap this up, though I’m likely to play with it still to learn all the different manipulations and effects.

Oh my.  Went to the Alice site at Carnegie Mellon just to rev myself up to finish the dumb Scratch project and pave the way to Alice and for goodness’ sake I found a plethora (love that word!) of information and stuff that took my time up not in doing but in watching (I am a reader not a writer; a watcher not a doer).

Watched some of the student and research team projects and found more and more animation software that led me ever onward and away from Alice herself. 

Example, from Panda 3D: Video Gallery–and in particular, Help Me, Carrot Eye.

Didn’t get a chance to wander too far into each to find out what exactly was going on, but I felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store since I’ve been shuffling down the street for only a few years and evidently am just now seeing what’s been available for years I guess.  Panda 3D is obviously a more elaborate program and one meant for the more skilled and knowledgeable animator, but I just fell in love with the little story in the Video Gallery noted above and now I wanna do that.

Scratch, then, is looking worse and worse by comparison and yet, if I can’t learn to maneuver in that (and following instructions) then it would be useless for me to expect to do anything in the more advanced programs. 

ARGH!

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.

Out of curiousity (and relative impatience with Scratch) I installed the Alice download.  Watched a tutorial (I’m learning to learn!) and it really drew me in with its screen setup and professional looking production.  The tutorial is wonderfully set up to encourage learning by allowing the user to interact–Try moving the order around, it says, and you can actually do it, overcoming the fear and getting the immediate satisfaction of working the program without having to just watch and try to remember what you saw.

Guilt alone will encourage me to finish up in Scratch with something presentable at least–but anticipation of playing in Alice will encourage me to finish up in Scratch without bothering to make it something I need to be proud of producing.