Wave hello

The friendliest move there is: up goes the right arm, the forearm waves back and forth, and a small happy bob keeps it light.

A cartoon person with the right arm raised high and the forearm bent, waving, and a dog with a front paw lifted beside it.

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

What it is for

Use Wave hello for greetings and goodbyes, for getting someone's attention across a room, or for a character who is pleased to see the audience. In the example cartoon Sunny waves while saying "Good morning, Grump!". On a dog or a cat the front leg answers the arm channel, so the animal lifts a front paw and paddles it; on the bird a wing goes up; on the monster its arm rises.

The principle it shows: pose to pose

The move is two poses and a rhythm between them. First the arm lifts into a key pose, up and out, with the forearm bent; then the forearm swings between two positions, 40 degrees apart, for ever. Animators call this working pose to pose: decide the important positions, then fill in the movement between them. The friendly blocks do the filling in: each turn glides over 0.2 seconds with a smooth ease.

The program, line by line

when it starts
  look happy
  bob 4 · every 1.2 s
  lift right forearm to 20°
  lift right arm to 150° in 0.35 s
  forever:
    turn right forearm by -40° in 0.2 s
    turn right forearm by 40° in 0.2 s

when it starts and look happy — the face changes to happy.
bob 4 · every 1.2 s — a small lift of 4 pixels; a bob wave holds two lifts, so the body bobs every 0.6 seconds.
lift right forearm to 20° — the forearm bends 20 degrees at once. The friendly part blocks count angles outward from the body, whichever side the part is on.
lift right arm to 150° in 0.35 s — the arm swings up to 150 degrees, almost straight up, in a third of a second.
forever: with turn right forearm by -40° in 0.2 s and turn right forearm by 40° in 0.2 s — the wave: the forearm turns 40 degrees back and then 40 degrees forward, again and again. Each "turn by" adds to where the forearm already is, so the two cancel out and the wave stays in place.

Try this

Lift the arm to 90 degrees instead of 150. The arm now sticks straight out to the side and the forearm waves at shoulder height, a more casual "hey there".
In the program: setPart · deg 150 → 90
Make the bob 12 pixels instead of 4. The whole body now bounces while it waves, like a child who has just spotted a grandparent.
In the program: bob · amp 4 → 12

How it differs from Wave and look and Point

Wave and look is a newer wave written with the skeleton's reach block: the hand aims at a spot beside the head, waves three times while the head tilts toward it, then lets go. Wave hello waves for ever with the arm set by angles. Point holds an arm still.

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:wave_hello · version 1.0.0 · CC0 (public domain) · by Jabbertoon