Hour of Code | Dance Party: Properties

My name is Maria.

I'm a junior at the University of Washington

and I'm an Amazon future engineer.

I love computer science because

it incorporates problem-solving and critical thinking.

And after putting hours of work into something,

you can get something really cool and rewarding out of it.

So far, you've had a chance to play with some different types of dancers

and you've programmed them to do different types of dance moves.

But how do these moves really work?

Every dance move is made up of a series of images called frames.

Each frame is slightly different from the
one before it.

When your program runs, the computer shows one frame after another.

They're shown so fast that it looks like the
dancer is moving.

This is the secret behind all animation.

Not only can you change your dancer's moves,

you can also change a dancer's properties.

Properties describe things like the dancer's
position on the screen,

the dancer's size,

and the dancer's color.

To change the properties of a dancer, you'll use a "set" block.

Let's use a "set" block to make our dancers look smaller.

First, drag the set block into your program.

Then, select the dancer you'd like to change

and type in the size that will appear on screen.

Full size is 100.

If you choose a lower number, that will make the dancer smaller.

The smaller the dancer is, the further away it looks.

This is a great way to make backup dancers.

Using the set block, you can also change the dancer's dimensions,

rotation,

position

and color.

By playing around with these properties

you can make all kinds of changes and link them to different parts of the song.

Remember, you can only set the properties of a dancer that already exists.

Make sure that your set block comes after the "Make a new dancer" block.

Feel free to experiment, be creative,

and have fun.