Imagine if every movie or video on the internet had only one character, and it was the same character in everything. Videos would be boring, you would not want to watch them.  No one would want to watch them.

Why

When you create projects and games, you are going to want more sprites than just the cat to make things interesting. You might not even want to use the cat in your project.

What

In this lesson you are going to learn how to add sprites, new characters to your project.

How

You are going to start by opening the move-the-cat project that you used in the last lesson.

The Lesson

The Choose a Sprite menu, shown in the above image, is that blue circle with a cat head on it in the lower right of the screen.

The menu gives 4 options for choosing a sprite.

One, you can choose a sprite from a list of sprites that come with Scratch.

Two, you can paint your own sprite. You can also paint on a sprite that comes with Scratch.

Three, you can have Scratch surprise you with a random sprite that comes with Scratch.

Four, you can upload a picture you created or found to be used as a sprite.

For a demonstration, let’s add a dog sprite to the stage by choosing a sprite from the list of sprites that come with Scratch. Once you add a sprite, change its name in the little sprite information menu.  It is good to choose good names so you can easily remember them when adding code blocks later on.

If we decided we wanted to get rid of the cat, simply click and hold down on the cat till a little trash can icon appears on the cat.  If you want to remove the cat, click on the trash can icon.  Warning, if you remove a sprite that you have already added code blocks to, you will lose those blocks when the sprite is deleted.

Challenge

Review

Congratulations, if you have successfully completed the challenge.

In this lesson you learned how to change the backdrop for your project.

Next Lesson

In the next lesson you will learn how to change and add sprites in your projects.