Spent this past Sunday learning MIT's Scratch programming language. The learning curve is not steep, it is actually fun. The language is highly interactive (made for kids) with easy drag and drop menus to modify building blocks (codes), events, motion, colors, motions for your sprites and backdrops. You can import your own backdrops (your photos for example) and sounds/music. Having said that, there are plenty of music loops and images that will be more than enough for your storyboard/games. I recommend using the materials provided and gets the basics down. The possibilities are definitely endless as is.
Here are 2 animation projects I designed with Scratch, Enjoy
Below are two games I designed on Day 2 and Day 3. The video shows what the screen shots look like on Scratch and as you can see, it is not intimidating, it is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together (of codes and commands). A little about how this works, you register an account with Scratch.MIT.edu, and the projects you designed are hosted under "My projects". You can edit, make new project, delete the ones you don't want, download a sample project and remix. You can download a copy to your desktop, record and export for YouTube. If you are looking to get your kids interested in coding, Scratch is a really fun way to get them interested
To learn the basics, the first thing I did was to go through a few tutorials on Sunday and Monday so I understand Scratch's building blocks and the "freedom" they allow me. On the 3rd day, I started making a few simple games. Today is Day 5 and I have made two games and an animation and am working on an animation for a kid's story. If you enjoy dabbling with colors and using pictures to tell a story, you will have find Scratch a happy medium. The drop and drag blocks make learning curve much shorter as one could test out concepts quickly (in much the same way digital camera gives an amateur photographer the ability to check and improve his shots, more often than not through a series of trials and errors from the instant feedback). I definitely had a lot of fun coding with Scratch. It is satisfying to play a game I design myself and seeing codes I worked on come alive in animation especially after having stayed up late testing and debugging them.
Here are some links to Scratch and Scratch tutorials:
MIT Scratch Site
Explore Scratch, see projects made by others
Scratch Wikipedia page
Free programming class on edx.org
