Shall We Learn

Level (2 out of 6 stars)

This project is great for a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I will show you how to turn yourself into a Sprite and to do something cool in a Scratch program. If you have followed the Scratch Programming Series, then this lesson will be pretty simple for you but it'll be a lot of fun!! What you need is a photo of yourself, GIMP, and Scratch. GIMP is a free image editing software that you can download from GIMP site.

These are three pictures I took of my son who was trying a handstand. I will use the first photo.

First, open the photo by going to "Open". Then select the photo.

After the photo has been loaded to GIMP.

Use the Free Select tool to select the figure. Each time you click, a blue circle will be added around the figure. Keep doing so until you've made a FULLY ENCLOSED area around the figure.

When the selection is completed (a fully enclosed area is made), then a dotted line will blink on and off around the selected figure.

Then do "Select"->"Invert" and hit the "Delete" button on your keyboard.

Now the selected background will become blank or filled with white.

Select the figure by doing "Select"->"Invert" again. And then click "Edit"->"Copy" to copy the figure. Then create a new image with this copied figure by doing "File"->"Create"->"From Clipboard".

Now we are ready to save. Go to "File"->"Save As…".

Select the GIF image file type and name it "down.gif". Then click "Save".

Click "Export" to continue.

Keep the default selection and click "Save" to finish saving.

Now we are ready to create a new Sprite using the saved image. Click "Paint New Sprite".

Select "down.gif" and click "OK".

Click "OK" to save the new Sprite.

If the sprite is too big, use the Shrink tool.

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