Hello once again everyone! Spotted Dragon here bringing you the December recap for Community Creations! December’s theme was Opposites and the featured work is not in any particular order. Be sure to check out all the featured artists!
The Love Between the Hero and the Villain by Meganf123456
Wow, lots going on in this scene! Effort was obviously put into each corner of this drawing, with all the surrounding objects drawing the viewer’s eye to the center. The concept certainly fits our theme of “opposites,” and continues to explore how opposites can come together. I love all the bright colors and effects! Find her DeviantArt here.
Fire and Ice by Quick Fang
A piece that’s spot on to our theme! Fire and ice are classic opposites, so they can easily be applied in this case. The Poptropican designs here are super cool- er, um, hot? Both, yeah, both. And the colors play well into the concept. I wonder what these two would be like if they were actual characters in an island? Find their blog here.
Sphinx by happyclonetrooper
Oooh, wow! I love this scene from Mythology Island, and it’s been captured wonderfully in this drawing. The concept of “life and death” is one of great significance and flexibility, making its way into our theme of “opposites” in a unique way. The colors in this scene are beautiful, particularly in the glowing flower, highlighting the beauty of life. In contrast, the pile of bones beneath the fierce beast is truly a deadly sight. The textures and lighting effects are fantastic as well! Find her DeviantArt here.
Angie and Demi by Gentle Dolphin
Cool, another classic set of opposites! I love Gentle Dolphin’s cute, clean style. Such smooth line art and coloring! And the well-known concept of angels and devils on either shoulder is applied perfectly here. The split composition and corresponding colors/emotions are very appropriate, and I think that we can all relate to the confusing conflict created when trying to make important decisions. Excellently made! Find her DeviantArt here.
Inverted Challenge by ANNE14TCO
Interesting application of our theme! “Opposite” colors can be interpreted many ways, such as complementary colors, saturation differences, etc. But color is often an important element of art to master, so the challenge of inverting color is super cool! The challenge makes for a unique submission, and one that plays with the emotion behind color in an interesting way. Reminds me of a certain scene in Poptropica with Zeus, huh? Nice work! Find her DeviantArt here.
Honorable Mentions
The Other Ones by themightywolftiger
Whatcha Doin by WitchyArtistGal
10yo Me Died by iLee-Font
Such a cool set of submissions this month! Keep up the creativity guys, well into the next decade! 🙂
January: How Do I Participate?
Community Creations is a cool series for anyone in the Poptropica community to join in on. To sum up what it’s about, it’s basically a chance to show off your artwork, creepy fan-fics, Pop clubhouses, costumes, and anything else that pops into your mind.
If we really like the piece you submit, we will feature it here on the PHB! As long as it relates to that month’s theme. So what is December’s theme? January’s theme is…
Time Travel!
Time travel is an interesting concept, and with the new year, or should I say new decade, rolling around, now is the perfect time to explore it as a theme! Unlike our previous theme of “historical,” time travel can apply to the future as well as the past. Different eras, in fact, can be found all throughout Poptropica! So how will you apply it to your creative creations?
The possibilities, like always, are endless! Perhaps construct the perfect costume for a time traveler! Or write a story of our your Poptropican got stuck in another timeline? Or draw some of your finest art inspired by Time Tangled Island! Maybe build what your Poptropican’s house will look like far in the future! Time for you to get started creating! 🙂
Comment below with a link to whatever you’ve created OR share it with me (SydVC aka Spotted Dragon) on DeviantArt, Twitter, or Discord.
Results: I will feature 5 of the submissions as well as 3 honorable mentions.
Limitations: Nothing NSFW, and make sure you relate to the theme.
Due Date: I will take any entries before the end of this month. Submit as many things as you’d like!
I will always be sure to let you know I have seen your creation. Bonus points if you make a compelling description for your piece! While quality counts, I’m mainly looking for something to simply catch my eye, so don’t be afraid to join in!
So what are you waiting for? Go make something awesome!
As we wind down on 2019, we’re going back into an old routine: looking back on the year that was, and recapping the highlights (and lowlights) of Poptropica and the PHB community. This year: flashing new, slashing old.
Poptropica recently shared their own recap of 2019, where they explained many of this year’s game updates, which were largely aesthetic changes, as “a really important part of the conversion process for getting the game off of Flash.” As a refresher: Poptropica was originally built on Flash, an older technology that will lose browser support by the end of next year. So, for some time now, Poptropica has been working on rebuilding away from Flash.
This process has brought about some fun design changes to the game over the past year—but there have been losses, too. Let’s hit rewind and get to it!
Poptropica kicked off a year of visual updates with two big changes in January: a new friends profile, and highly anticipated personal pets (and later, with accessories, too!). While the pets were generally well received, the friends profile redesign came with mixed reviews, as many of the original features were dropped, like adding friends by username or viewing island medallions. Showcasing a photo booth album was a nice new addition until the photo booth randomly disappeared later in the year.
In February, Poptropica gave members another perk: double the credits from the daily Wheel of Loot. It seemed silly at first, but then in March, the in-game Store got a makeover—and while the visuals were a big part, there were some other changes as well, and they had to do with membership: even members had to pay for store items with credits, and many of the items became for members only, even ones that used to be available to all.
Old store (pre-2019)
New store (2019)
Also in March, Home Island received the first of 2019’s various redecorating schemes with a pastel spring look!
Plus, a new face on the Creators’ Blog finallyintroduced herself as Blue Tooth, Poptropica’s official blogger. She isn’t quite as active as Poptropica’s former social media manager, Skinny Moon, but her engagement with the community has involved a more active Instagram page (and a less active Twitter feed). With it, she delivers Pop news in a fun, excited tone, as well as featured fan art and look book outfits, including a short-lived “Look of the Week” series and the never-delivered “Clubhouse of the Week” promise.
April brought about drastic changes to the map, with new categories that made much more sense than the previous update in 2017, and Flash-made islands relegated to the end. These “Old School Islands” met an even worse fate a few months down the line, when they were removed from the map entirely. RIP—but perhaps not forever. Fortunately, there’s still a way to access them unofficially, via idk’s Old Island Directory.
Indeed, this was a year of makeovers, as even the Poptropica homepage got a facelift with a bright green play button and new art (that’s gone through multiplechanges since then, too). Most noteworthily, Poptropica Worlds is no longer linked to on the homepage, though it can still be accessed here. It seems safe to assume they’ve quietly stopped working on Worlds, considering its lack of updates and the activity happening on the original Pop instead—including a steady stream of ad games and prizes.
Further confirming the theory that Pop Worlds is a thing of the past: in May, Poptropica launched syncing between devices for Original Poptropica on both the computer and mobile app, which was originally the big selling point of Worlds. At least it shows the Creators are serious about keeping Poptropica accessible in this modern age of gaming on the go!
Still, where are the new islands? Well, the first one of 2019 was nothing much—in June, Snagglemast Island replaced the previous tutorial, Monkey Wrench.
But July came with this year’s hottest new content: Reality TV: Wild Safari Island, a successor to the original Reality TV Island (which was one of the ~30 victims of the purge of old school islands). It didn’t quite live up to the hype of Poptropica’s previous islands, but you can read more on that in our review.
Snagglemast Island
Reality TV: Wild Safari Island
August was a quiet month for Pop, but things picked up again in September with several updates: common rooms finally upgraded to bigger screens and got arcade game stations, Poptropica celebrated its 12th birthday with a strange cake car costume, and Home Island got two more makeovers: fall and Halloween. Suitable store items accompanied the changing of seasons.
Fall on Home Island
Halloween on Home Island
Poptropica’s next island adventure was confirmed in October—a remake of Zomberry Island is coming, though later than anticipated, seeing as it was promised for “later this year” and the year is wrapping up. Still, we’ll be waiting for it in 2020!
In November, Home Island saw yet another remodel, casting quite a charm with its magical, wizardly theme! Also that month, Poptropica revamped its island tour pages in a similar vein to the PHB’s Island Guides.
Home Island’s magical makeover
Island tour revamped
Poptropica wrapped up 2019 by wrapping up some extra presents through its 12 Days of Member Gifts in December, which returned for a second year. Plus, the homepage saw a couplemore art pieces to represent Poptropica. And yup, another Home Island overhaul for winter—that’s five remodels this year!
And now, let’s turn to the next half of this rewind…
Last year, we commented on how little the Creators posted on their blog in comparison to the past, and even in comparison to the PHB. Fortunately, things have gotten better since Blue Tooth joined the scene. While the Creators’ Blog has hidden its post counter, here at the PHB we’ve delivered 135 posts to you in 2019, and they’ve been some good ones.
For starters, in early 2019 we took a look at the direction Poptropica has been taking over the previous few years in an op-ed that asked the question, is Poptropica turning into Mocktropica Island? Echoing popular sentiment from the Pop community, we lamented how the lack of new islands to play—core to Poptropica’s identity—has taken a backseat in production priorities to make way for the hyper-focus on visual updates.
On a lighter note, the PHB played around with the idea of a Poptropica fighting game, Smash Bros-style: “Smash! Crackle! POP!” It was just an April Fools’ prank, but we had fun with it—and we hope you did too!
We also brought back our annual Readers’ Survey, and the results were announced in May. Among the stats, we found that PHB readers are getting older (15–18 was the highest age range), many discovered the game in its earlier years (2007 was the top answer), and many of you found the PHB in the past couple of years (2016 led the chart on this one).
Marking the PHB’s 11th birthday in July, we held our annual Poptropica awards event, the Poppies, with a livestream to announce the winners you all voted for and a party to celebrate. Hosting a party on Poptropica was a bit trickier than in the past with Multiverse officially gone from the game after the friends profile update, but MM and idk (our Popular Poptropican of 2019 winner) helped us all find a backdoor way (which unfortunately no longer works) to access the much-missed feature. Anyway, catch the recap of the party and winners here!
We also celebrated our traditional Halloween costume competition, now in its 11th year, with a “Heavenly & Hellish” theme. The winners of PHB’s Halloween Eleven did indeed seem to come from the highest heights and lowest depths, with Jean of Pop’s “Heavenly Healer” and Quick Fang’s “Red-eyed Zombie Carnie” being crowned respectively. Even the PHB staff joined in the fun with costumes of their own! You can find all that and more in the PHB’s recently updated Look Book (i.e. Costumes page), which is now easier to navigate.
“Heavenly Healer” by Jean of Pop
“Red-eyed Zombie Carnie” by Quick Fang
Speaking of this community’s creativity, this is also our third year of hosting Community Creations, our monthly series where we feature works of fan art based around a theme. Let’s commemorate that with a gallery of some of this year’s top pieces, with one drawn from each month. (December’s features will be announced on the first of the month, of course.)
“Steamworks” by JadedIllustrator
“Happy Halloween!” by MissEligon
“Fall Forest” by happyclonetrooper
“Poptropica Endgame” by Magniventris
“They about to wreck this city” by WitchyArtistGal
“Pride Batch” by criaha
“Cabin Fever” by ToothlessDragon11
“Choose Your Fighter” by Maroon Raptor
“Super Paper Max” by MeganF123456
“His Universe” by pinklasgne
“10 Points to Ravenclaw” by ArtisticAsianBunny
And finally, we figured 2019 was a good a time as any to look back on the past decade in Poptropica, so we dug through the archives and gathered up what became The Poptropica Yearbook, accessible via the Pop Plus page.
This PHB project compiled Rewind posts of previous years as well as created new ones for years we hadn’t summarized before, and placed them all in one convenient location for Poptropicans to reminisce. And now, as we close another chapter, this 2019 Rewind will be remembered in its pages, too.
So that’s 2019! We gained some, we lost some, but we press on. To recap:
What’s new: Pets, friends profile layout (now with sticker wall, photo booth album, message board, mood, background, likes, clubhouse link), store layout, homepage, device syncing on Poptropica Original, official island tour pages, five Home Island makeovers, Snagglemast Island (tutorial), and Reality TV: Wild Safari Island—our only real island of the year, and a rather mediocre one at that.
What we’ve lost: 29 “Old School Islands,” Multiverse, various friends features (adding by username, island album photos, viewing all friends instead of only about 10, island medallions, pop quizzes), photo booth (so much for the new photo booth album on the friends profiles…), and, while still accessible, Poptropica Worlds has been quietly hidden away and left inactive.
With 2020 bringing about the end of Flash, the Poptropica Creators have been promising that they’re working on rebuilding Poptropica with newer technology that’ll keep the game around for years to come. That’s meant a different pace of updates in the last few years—without many new islands to tell new stories, it feels for some like Poptropica is missing its storytelling magic. But a new year—in fact, a new decade—is on the horizon, and perhaps that means new life for Poptropica. Stick around, and we’ll all see!
The post ends by saying “big plans” await in 2020—including the upcoming Zomberry Island remake!
We’ll be posting our annual Poptropica & PHB Rewind on New Year’s Eve, so stay tuned for that as well!
Poptropica’s last ad of this year happens to come from the first cartoon of next year: Owl House. To begin your adventure, enter the titular Owl House and talk to Eda. She will tell you that King has been kidnapped by a demon and give you her staff. All you need to do is move your mouse left and right to move around and avoid falling monsters.
Saving King and winning the game will reward you with two bewitching prizes: the Flying Staff and the King Friend Follower.
With the end of 2019 comes the end of the 2010s decade. To celebrate this momentous occasion, Poptropica music composer Jeff Heim is counting down the days by releasing 10 music tracks to Soundcloud! At this point, his playlist contains three previously unreleased Poptropica soundtracks, with possibly more to come.
The first Poptropica track in the album is called “Vampire’s Transformation.” Although the title implies that this song was made for Vampire’s Curse Island, it actually debuted in Poptropica Worlds’s Greek Sea Odyssey. You can hear it when you arrive at Mount Olympus before your big encounter with Zeus. Here’s to hoping that we get a Vampire’s Curse remaster soon!
The second track is called “Arabian Palace.” Unlike “Vampire’s Transformation,” this track is currently in the game—it can be heard in the sultan’s palace in “Arabian Nights, Episode 3: Careful What You Wish For.”
The third track is called “Drive” and could once be heard at the start of the Flying Ace Race on Monkey Wrench Island, which no longer exists as it was replaced by another tutorial, Snagglemast Island, earlier this year.
It’s nice discovering these tracks, and if you like them, I recommend also listening to Jeff’s non-Poptropica music, which you can find on his Soundcloud.
We’ve already covered the first, second, and third waves of member gifts. Now it’s time to unwrap these last few gifts! This final batch of member gifts are pretty cool, pun fully intended.
And the items are: Jack Frost, Ice Princess, Instant Ice, Snow Cone Toss, Carrot Nose, and Flying Sleigh. Thanks to Osmium for sharing pics of the items and animated gifs of the powers in action!
If you have an active membership at anytime this month, these items will be added to your inventory. Act fast before the festive gifts freeze over!
Over on the Creators’ Blog, Blue Tooth wrote a post detailing how Poptropica’s art is made. The post begins with a series of sketches for a Mythology Island-themed home screen. Artists create these small sketches, called thumbnails, to help them figure out what they want the picture to look like before they start adding details.
After the team agrees on a concept, they begin the sketch phase. And after approving the clean sketches, they put them in a vector format. What’s that, you ask? Blue Tooth describes the process in this paragraph:
What’s a vector? It’s a special, unique way you can make images on a computer. Instead of needing to save every single pixel in a picture, vectors draw and color pictures with math! (Bet you didn’t see THAT coming.) Vectors are what make Poptropica possible. The whole game uses them to run! That’s right, guys. We wouldn’t have Poptropica without math.
Poptropica’s team of artists work hard to deliver quality content to make the game more lively. For example, some players may have spotted a new home screen on Poptropica’s homepage. This screen features a cast of Poptropicans enjoying a nice day at a park while showcasing some in-game fashion. It hasn’t shown up on all browsers yet, but perhaps it soon might!
Good day, everyone! The holiday season is still going strong, and Poptropica has been giving nonstop to its players. We at the PHB have been covering the 12 Days of Member Gifts, but let’s take a break to discuss a special gift that gives all year round: ADVERTISING!!! (yay!🙃)
Sarcasm aside, Poptropica recently gave us three unique ads, each with their own cool prizes to offer! Let’s get started with an ad fitting for the holiday season.
Our first ad is a simple one promoting Netflix’s new Christmas special “Spirit Riding Free: Spirit of Christmas”. Watch the short video to earn the Free Spirit power. To activate this power, equip the apple and press the spacebar to see Spirit leap across the screen!
Our second ad also comes from Netflix, this one promoting their upcoming series “Fast & Furious: Spy Racers”. Walk inside and talk to Tony to enter the big race. This minigame is similar to the game Crash-N-Bash from the Blast-Off Arcade: choose your car and race to the finish line without running into obstacles (running into other cars is fine, though).
If you manage to win the race without totaling your car, you will receive the Cool Car Follower as well as Tony’s Car. The latter prize is especially awesome since you can take it on a sweet ride.
The last new ad of the bunch moves from Netflix to the big screen with “Spies in Disguise”. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to watch the trailer and play a racing game. After choosing your driver, you need to blast enemy robots by pressing the spacebar and jump over hazards by clicking your mouse (or tapping the screen if you’re on a mobile device).
Successfully completing your mission will reward you with the Pigeon Transformer and the Laser Scan Tuxedo. With these devices, you now have the choice to turn into either a suave pigeon or a savvy spy. Good luck out there, agents!
Over on social media, the most recent “Fan Art Feature” puts the spotlight on Instagram user @goldsberrie, who drew her Pop OC in a Disney-esque art style. It’s definitely a unique entry in this series, and you have to admit that this guy’s hair is amazing! If you would like the chance to have your art featured by Poptropica, post your art to Twitter or Instagram and tag it #poptropica or #poptropicafanart so they can see it.
That’s all for now. Out of these three new ads, which is your favorite? What’s your favorite new ad prize? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and tune in for more Poptropica news.
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