sky blue alchemist 4 4 cc 3 <| sep |> So what is it ? Looking for inspiration , you know . <| sep |> Looks like you ' re off to a great start . Couple points to note 1 . buttonLed will always be on unless the animation is playing , so writing buttonLed HIGH inside the if buttonStateHIGH block is unnecessary 2 . if buttonState HIGH this will not test if buttonState is high , but will set the variable to high . This is C , so know the difference between assignment and test for equality . Also , do not put the semicolon after the test in the if statement as it will seperate the if test from the code block that follows . 3 . Nowhere in your code do you set buttonState , so even if you fix # 2 , this won ' t actually check if the button is pressed . Based on item 2 , I predict that what you ' ll see is both buttonLed on , and the animated arcLed animating . However , buttonLed may be dimmer than normal as every pass through the loop will turn it on at the start , turn it off as it processes the arcLed animation , and on again after the faulty if statement at the end of the loop . Only minor issues now , this is a good template that is getting closer to a working solution . I ' ll try to help you along as you proceed . First off , lets get it working . Then once it does , and you understand the why and how , there are some other suggestions I would make based on what I see here .