How to draw and create a character for your video game on Scratch

Your kids or you have been learning coding with Scratch online or offline for quite a while.

The main character in Scratch is an orange and white cat. This is usually this cat we are using to learn our first coding tricks when getting started.

Depending of the project you are working on, you may want to change your backdrop (a beach, a baseball field, the Eiffel tower) and so your character to something else (a football player, a bicycle, a swimmer...). That's all good depending of what you want to create. It will fit correctly if you want to make your own video game.

Modify an existing character

But now, let's say you want to create your own video game. So comes your imaginary character coming straight out your mind. You want to design it. To do so, there is a tool in Scratch allowing to do this and it's called "Costume''. But before creating a new character from Scratch, let's modify our favorite character, I named the Cat. lol

1. Click on Paint

2. Change the color of the body parts

Click on the bucket

3. Choose the color

4. Put the mouse on the body part you want and when it becomes blue, left-click on it to add the color.

5. Draw a hat for the cat

With the brush, you can draw any type of object or shape that you want. You can also choose the color of the line by clicking on "Fill".

6. Export the character

Now that the sprite is finished, you can export it

7. And now save it to your computer at whatever directory you want. Just remember where you placed it.

8. Reuse the previous character

To reuse the character we have just created, go at the bottom right and click on upload. Now go straight to the directory where you placed it

After saving it, you can now use them whenever and for whatever project you want.

Use the character (sprite) in a new project

We can do so by uploading the previous sprite

When uploaded we can see the 2 costumes : "cat hat" and "cat hat 2"

The names have been changed there in costume:

We can now make a simple code to switch costume.

The first costume has a multi-color hat and the second one a all black hat. When pressing the space key bar, we will switch costume every one second.

Future project

Of course more can be done with this character. For example interact with the exterior world with electronics board as a remote and more. Stay tuned for the next article.

Subscribe to the newsletter and Social medias for updates

If you have any questions on this topic, send me an email at the following : contact@makersgeneration.net

Classes will be available for free on Saturdays at that same time to introduce your children to STEM in different topics ( Coding, Robotics, 3d modeling, smartphone app creation, electronics..).

Thank you for joining the classes with your kids. Consider to subscribe to the newsletter if you want to stay up to date to our weekly tips, videos, articles for parents and tutorials. It can be found at the bottom of the website ( www.makersgeneration.net).

You can also see weekly activities on our social media by subscribing: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and youtube.