how to make speech bubbles in scratch

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Say () (block)

The Say () block is a Looks block and a stack block . The block gives its sprite a speech bubble with the specified text — the speech bubble stays until an another speech or thought block is activated, or the stop sign is pressed. This block is identical to the Think () block, except that this block gives a speech bubble, while the other gives a thought bubble. This block immediately moves on to the next block when it is activated, unlike the Say () for () Seconds block. This mechanism is similar to the Start Sound () block.

• 1 Example Uses
• 2 Character Limit
• 3 Common Mistake
• 4 Debugging
• 6 References

Example Uses

As this block gives an optionally everlasting speech bubble (see common mistake for how to stop the speech), it is often used for a speech bubble that is desired to end after an unspecified amount of time, such as a triggered event or statement.

Some uses are:

• An object always making a sound
• A picture or a sign
• A message that is not wanted to go away
• A message that flips to the next when the space key is pressed
• An ending message (for example, 'You win!' or 'Please comment your thoughts!')
• A message that the viewer can choose how long it stays for
• Variable length speech (such as waiting for a player's action before moving on)

Character Limit

A character limit was added for Scratch 3.0 , limiting all text to 330 characters or less. [1] This limitation also applies to the following blocks:

• say () for () seconds
• think () for () seconds

Common Mistake

The "say" block is often misunderstood to stop saying the message when the script ends or moves on to the next block, but instead, the sprite continuously says the text until it says or thinks something else. To make a sprite stop saying a message, it must speak a blank message, which triggers the speech bubble to stay hidden and the sprite to say nothing.

The following script is an example of making a sprite say a message for an unspecified amount of time, and then stopping the message.

A proper script would look like this:

This script waits for 2 seconds before taking further action, making it possible for the user to see the dialogue.

The say block can be useful for debugging projects, as it can monitor certain values that the user needs to know about, by putting it in a Forever loop. For example:

• Say () for () Seconds
• Say Nothing
• Think () for () Seconds
• ↑ https://github.com/LLK/scratch-vm/blob/22645391cb69b1ed9ae01bb96ec67bfe8736a358/src/blocks/scratch3_looks.js#L77
• ↑ https://github.com/LLK/scratch-vm/blob/22645391cb69b1ed9ae01bb96ec67bfe8736a358/src/blocks/scratch3_looks.js#L144
• Looks Blocks
• Stack Blocks
• This page was last edited on 19 December 2023, at 02:59.
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Adding Speech Bubbles and Making Sprite to Talk in Scratch

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In this tutorial let’s learn how to make your sprites animated for your own Scratch comic strip, animation, or TV show. 

Scratch programming aids in the development of programmatic thinking in kids. This entails kids breaking down problems into smaller sub-components by structuring code blocks and experimenting with multiple solutions.

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• Video Tutorials:  It offers students to spend sufficient time exploring and developing new perspectives by building confidence in their ability to be makers, not just consumers of technology.

During this lesson, students will learn how to make their sprites animated for their own Scratch comic strip, animation, or TV show. You will learn to record your voice or make your sprites appear to speak or make your sprites appear to think. Finally, you will learn to synchronize and coordinate your dialogue.

Laptop/Computer along with audio and video exchange Notebook and Pen (To keep note of important parts in the session)

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How to Build a Simple Bubble Animation Effect in Scratch

By: Omowale Casselle

Categorized under: technology tutorials

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Text bubbles: a big guide

Although a text bubble seems to be a simple element, not everyone knows how to make it. Today we’ll cover what it is and how to do a text bubble from zero or using ready templates.

What a text bubble is and when you can use it

First, it is worth understanding what does it mean. A text bubble, also called a speech bubble, speech balloon, or dialogue balloon is a rounded or irregularly shaped outline filled with text and features a tail pointing toward the speaker.

The concept is well-known thanks to Superman, Batman, and Disney characters who spoke through speech bubbles. In comics, they express the words, thoughts, or emotions of a given character. However, text bubbles have gone far beyond the pages of comic books.

It is widely used in presentations. Want to make your report less boring? Add a text bubble as a design element to your slide, creatively illustrate your words, highlight the main idea, or frame an inspiring quote with it. You can also use them to create memes or cues in visual materials.

In formal documents, text bubbles are often called “callouts” as they are designed to attract the reader’s attention to a specific point or give instructions.

How to create text bubble using ready png

Creating text bubbles for any purpose is not very difficult today. The first and most obvious way is to find a ready speech bubble template in png format on the Internet. For example, download it from Google or find suitable ones on specialized stocks. Many stocks offer free templates for any purpose and to any taste. Then you can add a text bubble to a photo in any image editor.

If you want to use a ready-made speech bubble, make sure it does not violate copyright law.

How to create text bubble online

The easiest and fastest way to create a text bubble is an online service (for example, Phrase it or FlexClip ). It does not require any professional skills. All you need is to follow these steps:

• Choose a background picture (You can add a speech bubble to any stock picture or upload a photo from your device);
• Choose a bubble form;
• Place it on the picture;
• Add and edit the text;
• Download the picture on your devices or send it by email.

How to create speech bubble in Word , Excel, and PowerPoint files

The previous methods describe how to add a text bubble to a photo. However, you may need to add it to a text document, spreadsheet, or presentation to make a note, pay attention to a specific statement or give an example. Another reason you might want to know how to add a text bubble is when you already have an illustration inserted into your document, but you want to enhance it. In this case, creating a new image using online services will take more time than doing it directly in the editors.

Let’s see how to make a speech bubble in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint formats with ONLYOFFICE editors.

• Using ready png image . If you have a ready-made png image to add to your document, go to Insert —> Image  —>  Image from File and choose the picture from your device.

• Using shapes in editors. It is also possible to create a text bubble from scratch in document, spreadsheet, or presentation editors using shapes. The task is much easier than it may seem.

The shape feature has different shapes of text bubbles: rectangular selection can be used for quotes, oval callouts often serve as speech balloons, and cloud – for thoughts.

Go to Insert —> Shape —> Callouts and choose the necessary one.

Draw a speech bubble shape on the page. Then, modify its size, make a tail longer or shorter, or change its direction by moving the yellow point. Ideally, the tail should be pointed to the mouth or head of the speaker, if there is an illustration, or to the sentence or part of the text whose brief thought a text bubble expresses.

If you have already set the size and added text to a shape and then decided to choose another shape, there’s no need to delete the shape and start over. Use Change Autoshape option on the right-side toolbar to change the shape but keep the size and text.

How to add text and change font

To add text to a speech bubble, you just need to double-click it and enter the text. To change the font, you can use the usual fonts or apply text art on the right-side toolbar.

There’s a handy feature here. Instead of manually changing the size of the text bubble so that all the text is visible, you can set the automatic adjustment.

Click the shape, go to Advanced Settings , and choose to Resize shape to fit text . That way, after you enter the text, the bubble will automatically resize.

How to change background color or make it transparent

Speaking about text bubbles, we shouldn’t forget the background color, as it also matters. The bubble color helps to convey emotions or feelings. For example, red implies the speaker’s anger and rage.

You can easily change the default background of the shape. Click it and choose another color on the right-side toolbar. It is possible to choose a pattern for the background or make a text bubble transparent or gradient. Just select the desired option from the drop-down list under Fill on the right-side toolbar.

That is how to create a text bubble in different ways. As you noticed, it can be easily done even in document editors, using simple shapes and your imagination. Try it now in ONLYOFFICE Editors:

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Need speech bubble on top of front layer sprite

I have many projects where a sprite glides in front of another sprite. In Snap, e.g. https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=s_federici&ProjectName=sunglasses , if the lower layer sprite has a speech bubble, the bubble is hidden behind the front layer sprite. This doesn't happen instead in Scratch, where speech bubbles are always on top of other sprites, e.g. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/410615611/editor .

Is this something that could be taken into consideration in Snap? Or there are reasons in Snap to allow speech bubbles to be hidden by other sprites?

If this is a desired behavior, can someone point me to the methods to look at in order to allow my own personal copy of Snap to easily run projects imported from Scratch where speech bubbles are always on top of all sprites, without having to keep switching sprite's layers?

I'm sorry, Stefano, but I cannot confirm your claimed behavior in Scratch. From what I can see the layering of Snap's speech bubbles behaves exactly the same as in Scratch, i.e. it depends on the sprite's layer and only changes when the sprite's layer changes.

[edit: ] Oh wait! In current Scratch it's even worse, the speech balloon's layer does not change when the sprite's layer changes. Geez, that's clearly a bug in Scratch, don't you think?

in scratch, when a speech bubble appears, it goes to the top layer, so when a sprite says "hello" and there's another sprite in the front layer and it's on top of the spot where the speech bubble appears, the speech bubble is on top of the sprite even though the sprite that the speech bubble belongs to is in the back layer. If the other sprite goes to the front layer, the speech bubble is under that sprite, but when the parent sprite (the owner of the bubble) is moved, the bubble doesn't move. So speech bubbles go to the front layer when they appear. Here's another thing, the bubble layer only changes if the bubble is unloaded, then it resets, so when a new say block is run, it really changes the bubble text instead of creating a new bubble. That is so confusing.

This is certainly bad. But in Scratch a sprite cannot hide a speech bubble (do you have a counterexample?). In Snap instead sprites can hide speech bubbles (as shown in the two sample projects cited above that I have now correctly shared)

if you look at my post you can see that it is possible to hide a speech bubble in scratch.

In Scratch you can hide a speech bubble if the sprite simply moves behind another one with a speech bubble.

Yes, sure, in Scratch speech bubbles can hide other speech bubbles. But sprites cannot hide speech bubbles. This is different in Snap as you can see in the example project I prepared.

If this is a wanted behavior (even if I don't see the point of hiding a speech bubble behind a sprite) this is fine with me. In this case, can you point me to the correct methods I should change in order to get the exact Scratch behavior?

Do you a sample project showing this behavior?

yeah, I just forgot to give you the link https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/410626187/

This doesn't happen in Scratch 1.4. The bubbles always stay on top. In any case, this happens in Scratch 3 if you change the layer after the bubble has shown up. In Snap instead this can happens as soon as the bubble shows up, even if you don't change the sprite layer in the meantime.

And this is what I need: that the bubble stays on top of all sprites if you don't change the layer of a sprite.

In Snap! speech balloons stay ontop of the sprite they belong to, at the sprite's layer. That's an easy to understand, consistent rule. You can change the sprite's layer, and that also affects its speech balloon. Again, easy, consistent and predictable, giving you all the tools you need to control them via their sprites. Technically speech balloons are parts of their sprite, implemented as submorphs. I guess you could theoretically implement another architecture, treating balloons as separate morphs. But you'd run into a lot of complications if you did that, and you'd need to change very many things. I wouldn't encourage it. Also notice that Scratch's bugginess in this regard is an indicator that another architecture might not work any better at all.

I understand that the rule is technically ideal. But speech ballons are there as you are supposed to be able to read them. Hiding a ballon behind another element (except when it is really difficult doing something else if you keep dinamically changing the sprite's layers) it is not something that I would suppose someone could want as a standard behavior.

So, I guess I have to dig into this mechanism to try to square the circle.

Unfortunately I cannot understand the flow of Smalltalk code, but the treatment of speech ballons in BYOB is exactly what I need and what I think anyone would want. Ballons in BYOB are always on top.

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Say bubble appears far from sprites with empty space in them #1568

BryceLTaylor commented Mar 6, 2018

Successfully merging a pull request may close this issue.

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Adding Speech Bubbles

Last edited by cobraguy (April 15, 2014 12:51:44)

DiscordTheWolf wrote: say [Hello!] for (2) secs say [Hello!] think [Hmm..] for (2) secs think [Hmm..]

joshuaho wrote: DiscordTheWolf wrote: say [Hello!] for (2) secs say [Hello!] think [Hmm..] for (2) secs think [Hmm..]

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