Member Gifts – Page 3 – 🏝 Poptropica Help Blog 🗺

Hey, Poptropicans! We hope you’ve recovered from the flash of shock we gave earlier this month and are ready to dive into what else April has in store.

The April member gifts promise a blast to the past with three costumes based on some famous historical figures: Cleopatra, Sire Lancelot, and Pocahontas.

Speaking of the last costume, it looks oddly familiar. The Pocahontas costume bears a striking resemblance to Sacagawea in Time Tangled Island.

And what’s more, she’s fully customizable, even for non-members! So even if you’re not a member this month, you can get at least one of the member gifts. 😉 Just head on over to 1805 A.D. (the Lewis and Clark expedition) on Time Tangled Island, and you’ve got your two-for-one Native American look.

(Creators, next time maybe don’t imply that distinct iconic characters of shared ancestry, yet different time periods, are interchangeable by their appearance?)

On Instagram, Poptropica challenged artists to draw Ned Noodlehead in their style and to share the drawings with the hashtag #NedNoodlehead. Interesting that they chose Ned, the comic shop kid from Super Power Island—one of the old school islands that have disappeared from the map.

View this post on Instagram

Need something awesome to do this weekend? Draw good ol’ Ned in your style and share it with #nednoodlehead to be featured!

A post shared by Official Poptropica (@poptropicacreators) on Apr 3, 2020 at 4:47pm PDT

Within a day, creative fans got to work, and Poptropica featured some of the Ned Noodlehead art on their Instagram story. Check out these magnificent Noodlehead doodles! Think you could give it a try, too?

Recently, Poptropica has been promoting Timmy Failure Island on various channels—social media, the Creators’ Blog, and even the Home Island billboard. (Did you know that Timmy Failure has its own Disney+ movie now?)

But something odd has happened: Timmy Failure Island, which was formerly free for all, is now only available to members. Unlike with previously member-locked islands, this time non-members won’t even get to play a demo before hitting the paywall message. (Thanks for the tip, Perfect Fish.)

Strangely, the message refers to “early access” for Timmy Failure Island being for members only, even though the island came out in 2015. Did they just forget to change the wording, or are they working on revamping Timmy Failure for the Javascript (post-Flash) project and letting members beta test it first? Whatever the case, let’s hope it isn’t a failure.

Thoughts on this month’s member gifts and the fate of Timmy Failure Island? Want to share a Noodlehead doodle with us? Drop them in the comments!

Also, check out the other stuff we’ve got going on in the posts below! Join us for Community Creations (current theme: “stay at home”), take the 2020 PHB readers’ survey, and get some ideas for passing the time in quarantine with some good old Poptropica.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin 🐬

Merry (almost) Christmas, Poptropicans! 🎄

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!

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

—Gentle Dolphin🐬