Try making a micro movie

The package comes on two ROMs together with handbook and demonstration programs on tape.

The 55 page handbook is comprehensive in its coverage of the many new graphics commands available, but unfor tunately it becomes very technical too quickly.

The program is great fun to use and gives impressive results. The main graphic drawback is that because it works in Mode 7 all shapes are limited to those chunky teletext pixels.

This allows rapid movement cycles but restricts figures to being little more than stick men.

Initially you use the cursor keys to create shapes. You can define up to 200 and there are many functions which allow storage, recall, amendment and duplication.

For background the screen is treated as a camera which can pan over an area about 100 times bigger than itself. Any where on this area you can put scenery shapes such as trees, buildings and mountains.

They are fixed on the map and appear as the camera moves to their location. For the movie part a shape, perhaps a man, is selected and moved around against the background using the cursor keys in eight possible directions.

The program remembers each move and can repeat them at a definable speed giving the moving cartoon effect.

At the same time using the Cycle editing procedure the shape can be doctored frame by frame.

The figure can be made to move arms and legs, grow extra bits, enlarge or shrink - all the familiar tricks ofthe real movies.

You can change colours which adds to the animation. Cartoons are limited only by your imagination and artistic ability - most of you will surely do better than the feeble demonstrations provided.

MovieMaker is an enjoyable challenge that offers an excellent insight into the world of movie cartoon creation.

Terry Hallard