              Not quite up to the standard of

         Channel 4's animation but getting there.

            Timothy Closs keeps things moving.



              Pikchachanja for your Spectrum



Thanks to a technique like the one American animation

experts use, Pikchachanja allows one picture to be trans-

formed into another in a smooth, 15-frame animation

sequence.

  The pictures consist of a series of straight lines, with

each line having a partner in the other picture. By chan-

ging each line into its partner you can achieve up to 125

lines, and by pairing lines differently the animation can

be changed, so prior planning can add a lot to the finished

product.

  When you've finished typing in the program, run it and

you'll see the main menu:



    Press S to Save present data

          L to Load data

          A to see Animation

          any other key to continue

  Press any key other than S, L and A and the computer will

ask how many lines are required in the pictures - it must

be the same number for each picture as every line must have

one partner, but see note with example 1.

  The screen will then clear and the cursor will appear,

together with information concerning the cursor position,

the number of lines entered and the present cursor jump in

pixels.

  The pictures are confined to the upper third of the

screen for memory reasons. Now you can enter the first

picture lines in one of two ways:

1. Plot a point, move cursor and plot another point. A line

   is drawn from one point to the other.

2. Draw a line from the last point plotted on the previous

   line to the cursor.

Apart from using the cursor keys to move the cursor, here

are the other controls:



# 1 sets cursor jump to one pixel

# 2 sets cursor jump to 10 pixels

# 0 plots a point

# 9 draws a line from last point plotted



  When all the lines have been entered, a short beep trans-

fers the first picture to the lower third of the screen.

Now you can draw the second picture in the same way, enter-

ing lines in the appropriate order so that pairing is auto-

matic.

  The Spectrum will then proceed to draw up each inter-

mediate frame on the screen and store them in its memory.

When all 15 frames have been stored, the screen will clear

and the pictures are transformed back and forth in a smooth

sequence, during which the main menu can be recalled by the

touch of a button.

  The data held in the computer can be saved by pressing S

while the main menu is displayed.

  Data can be loaded by pressing L while the menu is dis-

played. Having entered the file name the Spectrum will

search for the file and, if found, will begin to draw up

the frames and store them in its memory as mentioned

earlier. The animation sequence present in memory can be

viewed by pressing A.





Picture 1.                    Picture 1.

    1                             1

 +-----+                    +-----------+      Picture 2.

 |     |                    |           |          +

 |     |     Picture 2.     |           |         / \

 |     |                    |           |    2+3 /   \

4|     |2        4         4|           |2      /     \

 |     |   +-----------+    |           |      /       \ 1

 |     |   |           |    |           |     /         \

 |     |  3|           |1   |           |    /           \

 |     |   |           |    |           |   /             \

 +-----+   +-----------+    +-----------+   +-------------+

    3            2                3                 4

 Example 1.                  Example 2. If the two pictures

                             do not have equal numbers of

                             lines, superimposing two or

                             more lines will complete the

                             picture without changing its

                             appearance.