arrow_back Animate a Story Title

Hi everyone!

I'm Christan.

I'm a community engagement manager for Scratch.

That means I help keep Scratch a supportive place where anyone can have fun sharing their amazing animations, stories, games, and art.

I love to travel--one of my favorite trips was taking a train from Budapest, Hungary to London, England.

I'm also teaching myself to play the ukelele!

Look for me on Scratch under the username ceebee, and check out some of my projects here.

In many of my scratch projects, I use a thumbnail, which is an image and title that describes the project.

In this video, I’m going to show you how to build a thumbnail for the title for your story.

Let’s get started!

You’ll make something similar here.

First, think of a title for your story.

Your title should give your audience a hint of what your story is about and make them want to find out more.

Click “Choose a sprite” and “Paint” to draw a new sprite.

Click the text tool, and type your title.

To resize the title, click away from it, then drag the corners.

You can also use the select tool to highlight and resize.

Tinker with the font using the text tool, and the color using the fill tool until you like the result.

Add a box or border around your title to make it stand out.

Make it a different color, and use the “backward” tool to make the text show in front of the box.

If you make a mistake, that’s okay!

Just use the “undo” button.

Next, program the title to fade.

Click the Code tab, and select the Looks menu.

Click, hold, and drag out a “change effect” block.

Change the dropdown to “ghost.”

Click the block to test.

The Title becomes more transparent!

To make the title continue becoming transparent so it fades away, use a loop.

A loop is a block that repeats the actions inside it.

Select the control menu, and drag a “repeat” loop around the “change effect” block.

Click the stack to test it.

The sprite disappears.

To make the sprite reappear, add a “set effect” block from the Looks menu to the top of the code stack.

Change the dropdown to “ghost,” and set the value to “0.”

A zero value means the sprite is not transparent at all, or solid.

Click this block stack to test it.

The title disappears too fast.

To fix this, tinker with the values in the “change effect” and “repeat” blocks.

This example uses “2” in the change effect block and “50” in the repeat loop.

Nice!

To make the title fade when your program starts, add a “when flag clicked” event.

Click the flag to test.

Whoa!

When the flag is clicked, the story starts before the title screen disappears.

To fix this, use a “broadcast” block from the Events menu.

This block sends a message to other sprites in your project to affect how their code runs.

Drag the “broadcast” block to the bottom of the block stack.

Select “new message” from the dropdown menu.

Give the message a descriptive name.

When the “broadcast” block runs, it’ll send this message to your other sprites.

Next, program the other sprites to receive this message.

Select one of the character sprites.

Replace the “When flag clicked” event with a “when I receive” block from the events menu.

Make sure the dropdown menu matches the name in the “broadcast” block.

Try it out!

Great!

When the green flag is clicked, all the sprites in your story will receive the message and begin their code after the title fades.

Now, it’s your turn!

Paint a new sprite, and use the text tool to write a title.

Program the sprite to fade using a “change effect” block, a “repeat” loop, and a “when flag clicked” event.

Use “broadcast” and “when I receive” blocks to program your story to happen after the title disappears.

Then, return to this page to select another video to try.