If you would like to animate your own cartoons, write your own video games or even create interactive artworks, but cannot be bothered with all of that complicated coding business this next site could be for you. Check out www.scratch.mit.edu
Scratch is the brainchild of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) media lab. It is a set of tools designed to be used by people without computer programming skills - that is most of us then.
It makes use of a graphical interface which allows the user to build a sequence with building blocks. These are dragged, dropped then linked together, a little bit like multimedia Lego. Images can be selected from an existing library or imported from your hard drive.
Once imported, a number of action blocks can be assigned to the image. These blocks are assigned commands like "move" or "play drum", and the blocks can then simply be stacked together to create an animation.
Once your masterpiece is complete it can be uploaded to the Scratch site for other users to check out. Scratch's inspiration comes from Hip-Hop DJs, who take a bit of this and a bit of that to create something new.
While the site is primarily aimed at younger users, it is still a lot of fun for grown-ups with a creative streak.
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