Robot

A stiff, mechanical dance; a brand new pose every beat, snapped into with no easing in between, the arms and head changing all at once.

Use it in a cartoonOpen it in the block editorThe pack file (JSON)

What it is for

Robot is for a character pretending to be, or actually being, a machine: a dance at a party, a toy come to life, a character doing an impression. It loops forever, cycling through the same four poses, so it suits a whole scene rather than one line, and the character never looks alive the way a person does, which is the point.

The principle it shows: pose to pose

Robot is built entirely from four held key poses, each one snapped into and then left alone; nothing eases smoothly between them the way a person's motion would. That is animating pose to pose rather than following a continuous path, and the choice itself is what makes the character read as mechanical rather than organic.

The program, line by line

when it starts
  forever:
    glide right arm 90, right forearm 90, left arm -10, left forearm 0, head 8 over 0.08 s (snappy)
    wait 0.42 s
    glide right arm 10, right forearm 0, left arm -90, left forearm -90, head -8 over 0.08 s (snappy)
    wait 0.42 s
    glide right arm 90, right forearm 0, left arm -90, left forearm 0, head 0, dy 4 over 0.08 s (snappy)
    wait 0.42 s
    glide right arm 20, right forearm 90, left arm -20, left forearm -90, dy 0 over 0.08 s (snappy)
    wait 0.42 s

• when it starts — begins when the move is put on a character.
• forever: — the four poses repeat for as long as the move runs.
• glide right arm 90, right forearm 90, left arm -10, left forearm 0, head 8 over 0.08 s (snappy) — the right arm snaps up and bent, the left arm stays low, and the head turns 8 degrees, all in under a tenth of a second with a sharp little overshoot at the end.
• wait 0.42 s — the pose holds.
• glide right arm 10, right forearm 0, left arm -90, left forearm -90, head -8 over 0.08 s (snappy) — the arms swap sides entirely and the head snaps the other way.
• wait 0.42 s — holds again.
• glide right arm 90, right forearm 0, left arm -90, left forearm 0, head 0, dy 4 over 0.08 s (snappy) — both arms go up straight with no bend at the elbow this time, the head returns to centre, and the body drops 4 pixels.
• wait 0.42 s — holds.
• glide right arm 20, right forearm 90, left arm -20, left forearm -90, dy 0 over 0.08 s (snappy) — a fourth pose, the arms bent the other way and the body back to 0, before the cycle starts over.

Try this

1. Hold each pose for a full second instead of 0.42. The dance slows right down, which reads as a robot running low on power rather than dancing on the beat.

   In the program: wait · s 0.42 → 1

2. Snap the head 20 degrees instead of 8. The head turn becomes the most noticeable part of the pose, jerkier and more obviously mechanical.

   In the program: ramp · to.part:head 8 → 20

How it differs from Groove and Spin

Groove also moves on a fixed beat, but it eases smoothly between two simple arm swings rather than snapping between four distinct poses. Spin turns the whole body through its views; Robot never turns at all, it only changes its held pose.

Works on

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