Time For Dinner
The Goal
Step 1. Draw the cat
Step 2. Draw more costumes for the cat
Step 3. Draw the wheel
Step 4. Draw the stage
Step 5. Draw the mom
Step 6. Make mom hide
Step 7. Record the voices
Step 8. Make the wheel turn
Step 9. Make the cat speak
Step 10. Send some messages
Step 11. Finish the project
The Goal
Watch the movie below to see the project we’ll make.
Step 1. Draw the cat
Begin by deleting the orange cat that comes with Scratch. Can you figure out how to use the scissors to delete him?
Now we need to create the main character in our story, a cat who’s driving a toy car. Click the paintbrush tool and create a cat that looks like the one below.
Notice that you should omit the steering wheel. We’ll create the steering wheel in a moment!
Take a moment and name your sprite cat by typing in the sprite’s name field:
And take another moment to name the costume that you created. Call it ooh, as in the picture below.
As the next step, we need to create three additional costumes to give the cat facial expressions that make him look like he’s speaking.
Step 2. Draw more costumes for the cat
Now you should copy your first costume by clicking the Copy button. A new costume will appear just below the first one. Click the Edit button next to this costume and then change the cat’s mouth to look like the one below:
Name your new costume big oh.
Continue copying, editing, and naming costumes until you have 4 of them like the ones below:
Step 3. Draw the wheel
You must create a new sprite that’s the wheel of the toy car.
To do so, click the paintbrush tool to create a new sprite. Then make a wheel that looks like the one below. Make sure that the hands are the same gray as the body of the cat you made in the previous step! Name your costume wheel right.
Like the cat, the wheel has several costumes that we’ll use to create the illusion of motion. Using what you learned in the previous step, copy the first wheel costume to create additional costumes for the wheel that look like the ones below.
Hint!
- When you’re editing each costume, use the selection tool to select the wheel, and then use one of the rotation tools to tilt it in a new direction.
Step 4. Draw the stage
Can you figure out how to change (edit) the stage and draw one that looks like this? (Hint! Zoom all the way out in the paint editor. Can you figure out how?)
Step 5. Draw the mom
The last sprite we need to create is the “mom” who appears about halfway through the story to say, “Time for dinner!”
Mom looks like the drawing below. We see only a little of her because she’s peeking out from the doorway:
Step 6. Make mom hide
In this project, mom hides for the first few seconds of the project. Here are the commands you’ll need to make mom hide.
Hint!
- Add the green flag command and the go to command to your project first.
- Click the green flag to start your project and see if mom appears in the doorway. If not, adjust the numbers in the go to command and try again.
- When everything looks OK, add the hide command. (After you add the hide command, mom will be invisible! That’s why you need to place her into the proper position first.)
Step 7. Record the voices
The cat and the mom both speak in the project. You can record their voices!
You’ll need to record 3 voices:
- That cat saying, “Hellllooooo…..”
- The mom saying, “Milk, honey. Time for dinner!”
- The cat saying, “Yes, mom.”
To record the cat’s voices, go to cat sprite’s Sounds tab. Then click the Record button. Can you figure out what to do from there?
To record the mom’s voice, go to the mom sprite’s Sounds tab and click Record.
Hint!
- Be sure to type a name for each voice after you create it so you can refer to it later in your script. Can you figure out how to name each sound?
Step 8. Make the wheel turn
To make the wheel turn, we’ll change its costume over and over creating something like a flip book. (A flip book is a book of drawings. The drawings change just a little from one page to another. If you flip the pages quickly, the character seems to move or change, as if you were watching a movie.)
You can use the pieces below to make the wheel’s costume change. Are you wondering why you need the wait command? The wait command occurs just after each costume change, slowing down the costume changes just a little bit so that you can see them clearly. If you change costumes without the wait command, they go by so quickly that you can’t see them!
Can you assemble the commands below so that they make the wheel turn?
Step 9. Make the cat speak
To make the cat say hello, you’ll need to add the commands below to the cat’s script. (Your sound might be named something different from Hello. That’s OK! Just put your sound’s name into the play sound command.)
To make the cat drive, you’ll need to change its costume over and over, just as you did for the wheel. And you should make sure that the last costume you see is the one called smile. Can you figure out how to add the add the commands below to the cat script. You’ll need to rearrange the commands. Can you figure out how to do it?
Step 10. Send some messages
In a story like this one, the events need to happen in a specific order. In Scratch, you make events happen in a specific order by sending messages among the sprites. For example, after the cat says “Hello,” he’ll send a message to mom telling her that she can say “Milk honey…” These messages are silent; you can’t see or hear them. But the sprites can respond to them!
To send a message, you’ll add the broadcast command in the cat script to the end of the commands that change the cat’s costume, like this:
Now, click the down-arrow on the broadcast command, and then click new…
In the next window, type the name you’d like to give your message. In this case, type Mom and then click OK.
So now the cat will send a message just after he shows the Smile costume. Now we need to tell the mom sprite to appear and say “Milk, honey…” when she receives this message.
Switch the the mom sprite and click the Scripts tab so that you see mom’s script.
To tell mom to respond when she receives the Mom message, we can use the following command
Click the down arrow on the when I receive command, and then click Mom.
Then complete the receive command by adding the commands below. All together, these commands tell mom to say Time for dinner when she receives the mom message:
Finally, mom must send a message back to the cat so that the cat can say its final words.
Can you add a broadcast command like the one below to make mom send this message?
Step 11. Finish the project
When the cat receives its final message, it does 2 things at the same time: it says Yes, mommy and it drives its car. In Scratch, when your sprite must do 2 things at the same time, you must add 2 sets of commands that occur simultaneously. Here’s what to do…
To make the cat say Yes, mommy, you can use the commands below. Can you unscramble them?
And, finally, to make the cat drive at the same time, you can use the commands below. Can you unscramble them and change their numbers so that they work properly?
. . .
That’s it!
This project was created by clumeco at http://scratch.mit.edu.
