Name Prototype:

Click Game Prototype:

Final Game:

I learned Scratch when I was in middle school and honestly I was not excited about this project. I feel like the program is visually geared towards young children, but I wasn’t aware of all of the things you can do with scratch, like adding in your own art.

I started with prototyping my name and focusing on graphic design elements, aesthetics, changing costumes and some of the features coding.  After that I followed the balloon click game tutorial to develop an understanding of how to code a click game and come up with some ideas of what I wanted to make. I started my bug game by designing my bug and net. I chose bugs just because I really like bugs. I was pretty frustrated learning how to design them through Scratch, especially the net, but it did give me an opportunity to really understand how that part of the program works. As for coding, I copied the coding from the balloon click game for my bug and then attached a few extra things like the speech at the end. Figuring out  how to code the net was the challenging part. I wanted it to follow the mouse as if we were using a net to catch the bug. I also wanted to find a way to have the net flip to catch the bug. Here is the coding I used:

I was feeling quite limited by coding offered because I was trying to figure out if I could use the “when this sprite is clicked” option (bug) and apply that to change the nets costume.  However those don’t crossover. It took me a while to find the “touching bug” option. I felt that was having to find difficult ways around something that could have been easier. However, I am glad that it was not as thorough as Photoshop because I could see myself getting very overwhelmed.

Things that I picked up on from my classmates was understanding how to upload a drawn sprite. Nina showed me an app she downloaded on her phone to cut out the shape and remove it from the paper. I also really enjoyed Pedro’s game because it was awesome to see how he applied his previous graphic design background. I also liked that he had an introductory screen.

Ways that this relates to art and art education is that the main focus is graphic design, but can also involve other interests like drawing and painting, or even music as sounds. I think there are also ways to incorporate art history by finding a mentor artist or create scenes based around certain artists.

If I were to use this in a future classroom (high school level), I might consider skipping the chase and click games or give the opportunity to do a choice based game as that project as well. If I were to skip those games I would ask them to watch the tutorials or create prototyping videos to show so that they don’t feel like thy are missing information. Maybe it is just me but I felt I was ready to jump into something that felt like a butterfly effect game, but those are also the kinds of games I tend to gravitate towards.