Cheer with pom-poms

Both hands shake pom-poms high and low, in turn, forever: one arm up while the other is down, swapping back and forth.

A cartoon person with both arms flung wide, one hand high and one low, and a dog with its front paws doing the same.

Use it in a cartoon Open it in the block editor The pack file (JSON)

What it is for

Cheer with pom-poms is for a character on the sideline of a game, celebrating a win, or egging a crowd on. It loops forever, so it can run under a whole scene rather than a single line, and it reads at a glance because the two arms are always doing opposite things. On a dog or a cat the front paws take the arm channels, so it juggles its paws high and low the same way; the pom-poms themselves are a prop the studio does not yet draw.

The principle it shows: secondary action

The main action is the big swap of the arms between high and low. Riding along with it is a small secondary action: the whole body lifts 4 pixels while the arms are at their highest and settles back down while they are at their lowest, a little hop timed to the cheer rather than a motion of its own.

The program, line by line

when it starts
  forever:
    glide right arm 165, right forearm 20, left arm -110, left forearm -50, dy -4 over 0.12 s (out)
    glide right arm 150, right forearm -6, left arm -120, left forearm -70 over 0.13 s
    glide right arm 110, right forearm 50, left arm -165, left forearm -20, dy 0 over 0.12 s (out)
    glide right arm 120, right forearm 70, left arm -150, left forearm 6 over 0.13 s

when it starts — begins when the move is put on a character.
forever: — the whole cheer repeats for as long as the move runs.
glide right arm 165, right forearm 20, left arm -110, left forearm -50, dy -4 over 0.12 s (out) — the right arm swings up almost straight with the forearm nearly flat, the left arm swings down and back, and the body lifts 4 pixels, all easing into place.
glide right arm 150, right forearm -6, left arm -120, left forearm -70 over 0.13 s — a small settle, both arms easing a few degrees further into the same high/low shape.
glide right arm 110, right forearm 50, left arm -165, left forearm -20, dy 0 over 0.12 s (out) — the arms swap: now the left arm is the one up near full height and the right is down, and the body drops back to 0.
glide right arm 120, right forearm 70, left arm -150, left forearm 6 over 0.13 s — the matching small settle on this side, before the cycle repeats.

Try this

Slow the first swing from 0.12 s to 0.3 s. Each swap now takes noticeably longer, which turns the quick cheer into something closer to a slow victory wave.
In the program: ramp · over 0.12 → 0.3
Raise the hop from 4 pixels to 16. The body visibly bounces on every swap instead of just lifting a little, so the cheer gets a real jump in it.
In the program: ramp · to.dy -4 → -16

How it differs from Jump for joy and Side step

Jump for joy throws both arms up together and leaves the ground; Cheer with pom-poms keeps the arms taking turns and the feet down. Side step repeats on a beat the same way, but moves the feet side to side instead of the arms up and down.

Works on

Worked out by the build: it plays the move in the engine on each body and checks what moves on screen. Nobody types this table.
Body	Moves?	What moves
2 legs (a person)	yes	whole body, arms
4 legs (a dog)	yes	whole body, front legs
no legs (the monster with no legs)	yes	whole body, arms

c4c:beh:pompom_shake · version 1.0.0 · c4c-free · by Jabbertoon