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Pen

The Pen extension lets sprites draw on the stage. A sprite leaves a trail as it moves, stamps its costume, or prints text. It is built in, works offline, and is compatible with Scratch. Bilup adds a few extra pen blocks on top of the Scratch set (triangle drawing and text printing).

Load it from Add Extension and choose Pen.

note

When the Stage is selected, the palette shows fewer pen blocks, because some pen actions only make sense for a movable sprite.

Drawing blocks​

erase all​

erase all

Clears everything drawn or stamped by the pen from the stage.

stamp​

stamp

Draws a copy of the sprite's current costume onto the stage at its position.

pen down / pen up​

pen down
pen up

pen down starts leaving a trail as the sprite moves. pen up stops it.

Color and size​

set pen color to [color]​

set pen color to [#ff0000]

Sets the pen color using the color picker.

change pen [param] by [value] / set pen [param] to [value]​

change pen (color v) by (10)
set pen (brightness v) to (50)

Adjust one component of the pen color. The dropdown offers color (hue), saturation, brightness, and transparency.

change pen size by [size] / set pen size to [size]​

change pen size by (1)
set pen size to (10)

Controls the thickness of the pen line.

Legacy shade and hue blocks​

set pen shade to (50)
change pen shade by (10)
set pen color to (0)
change pen color by (10)

These older shade and numeric hue blocks are kept for compatibility with projects made before the newer color-parameter blocks existed. Prefer the set pen color and set pen ... to blocks in new projects.

Extra drawing blocks (Bilup)​

draw triangle between [x0] [y0], [x1] [y1] and [x2] [y2]​

draw triangle between (0) (0), (50) (0) and (25) (50)

Draws (and fills) a triangle between three stage coordinates using the current pen color.

Printing text​

set print font to [Sans Serif v]
set print font size to (20)
set print font color to [#000000]
set print font stroke color to [#ffffff]
set print font stroke width to (0)
set print font weight to (400)
set print font italic (off v)
print [Hello] at x: (0) y: (0)

These blocks configure a font and then draw text onto the stage at a given position. The stroke settings add an outline around the text, and weight controls boldness.

Tips​

  • Pen drawings live on the stage's pen layer, separate from the sprites. erase all is the only way to clear them (besides redrawing).
  • For crisp lines at high resolution, enable the High Quality Pen addon. See High Quality Pen.

See also​