Scratch provides graphics (also known as “sprites”) that you can use as characters in your Scratch games. For example, the default sprite is Scratch, the cat.

You can use “Costumes” to animate characters. For example, the Scratch character comes with several costumes with his feet in different positions. When you switch to a different costume, it makes Scratch appear to run.

There are many sprites that come with Scratch. Unfortunately (or fortunately), not all of them have multiple costumes. This gives us the chance to provide custom animations for our sprites by learning a bit about graphics.

The easiest way to animate an existing sprite is:

1. Click on the “Costumes” tab for the Sprite that you wish to animate
2. Make a copy of the current costume by pressing the “Copy” button
3. Edit the new costume. Scratch provides basic graphic editing functionality.

Scratch provides a very rudimentary graphics editing program. However, you might want to use an external graphics program such as GIMP or KolourPaint to edit a costume, because they're more powerful or easier to use than the built-in graphical editor. This section shows you how to use external editors to animate Scratch costumes.

Scratch stores the basic costume files in this directory:

/home/student/Scratch/Media/Costumes

Finding your costume file. If you used the “helicopter” costume that is in the “Transportation” folder in Scratch, then the helicopter will probably be located at

/home/student/Scratch/Media/Costumes/Transportation/helicopter

See how that works?

Be sure to make a copy of the original costume. For example, copy helicopter1 to helicopter2.

Now, you're ready to modify helicopter2. KolourPaint has some intermediate graphics tools, such as free-form select, and flip/rotate. These two tools were used to change the helicopter's propellers to appear to rotate.

Helicopter 1:

Helicopter 2:

Now, you can use both helicopter1 and helicopter2 in your project. Use the “Next Costume” command to change costumes.

Confused? See Scratch Custom Animation Demo for a demonstration.