If you want your ScratchJr animations to look truly professional, you need to understand perspective! This tutorial teaches absolute beginners how to use the Shrink block to make characters appear to move into the distance, followed by the Hide block for a convincing exit.

The project involves making the kitten walk to school and disappear into a building, showcasing a lovely sense of depth in your coding projects.

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1. Setting the Stage and Character Placement

The first job is to set up the scene and position the kitten for its big walk.

• Background Selection: The tutorial begins by selecting the City background [00:26]. This background provides the perfect setting with buildings for the kitten to enter.
• Initial Positioning: The kitten is placed on the bottom left-hand side of the screen [00:35]. This starting point gives the kitten a long path to walk across the scene.

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2. Building the Code: Movement, Shrinking, and Hiding

The sequence is built using four key blocks, designed to make the kitten move, get smaller, and then vanish.

The Start and Movement

The code is built by assembling the blocks in the following order:

1. The Start: Begin, as always, with the Green Flag block from the yellow category [00:40].
2. Direction: Add the Move Right block and the Move Up block from the blue category. These combined movements will direct the kitten towards the building [00:51].

The Visual Effect: Shrink and Hide

1. The Shrink Block: Head to the purple/Looks category to find the Shrink block [01:04]. This is the clever bit! As the kitten moves towards the building, using this block makes it appear to get smaller, creating the illusion of walking into the distance.
2. The Hide Block: The familiar Hide block is used immediately after the shrink command [01:16]. This makes the kitten completely disappear, simulating it entering the building through the door.
3. The End: Finish the sequence with the Stop block from the red category [01:21].

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3. Customising the Numbers for Perfect Timing

Once the blocks are in place, the video walks you through tailoring the movement and shrinking distance for a perfect effect.

• Customising Movement: You’ll learn to click on the number in the Move Right block and change it to 8 (or adjust using the grid tool to suit the chosen building) [01:33]. The Move Up block is set to 1 square, allowing the kitten to cross the road and reach the building’s base [02:10].
• Setting the Shrink Factor: The Shrink block is set to a factor of 8, ensuring the kitten reduces its size significantly just before vanishing, which really sells the perspective effect [02:17].

4. Running and Reviewing the Animation

Once the numbers are tweaked, you can run the final code to see your handiwork:

• Pressing the Green Flag initiates the programme.
• The kitten walks right and up, simultaneously shrinking to create perspective, and then disappears into the building—an amazing job, well done! [02:22].

This tutorial is fantastic for improving your understanding of sequential coding and using visual blocks to enhance your animated stories.

If you enjoyed this, here are more ScratchJr tutorials, projects and lessons.