POPTROPICANS! ✨🎉 Set down your sandwich, get your nostalgia caps on, and lock in! It is that time of year again… time for…
✨ The Poppies2026! 🦸
(2026 Banner by Magic Kid)
If you’re new here, welcome to our yearly super cool event called: The Poppies! This is our annual community awards event. During the month of July, the Poptropica fandom (that includes YOU!) nominates, votes, and finally, celebrates the winners of our awards categories! It truly is a fun time for all members of this community to get together and celebrate this game we know and love, and the fandom built around it.
This year, we have 10 categories! You can make up to 3 nominations in each category of whomever or whatever you think deserves the crown for that title. 👑 Nominations are open now until July 8, so tell yourself and your friends to get your suggestions in soon!
Despite the “Drawing Your Poptropicans As Emoticons” series coming to an end, and we’re going to ignore the fact that my most recent post was last year, I have not ceased to make Poptropica fan-art!
My most recent drawing is actually a redraw of one of my oldest Poptropica fan-arts. I’ve made it a tradition to recreate every year and figured it would be fun to share my journey with all of you lovely poptropicans.
2022
Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? In 2022, the Poptropica creators did a “12 Days of Member Gifts” design contest. I submitted three ideas, and amazingly, one got used for it! I was an art baby back then and also EXTREMELY new to digital art. Somehow, I drew this on just an old Chromebook with the touch-pad thing under the space-bar. 😂
From the official Poptropica creators, when they announced my design made it! Proud moment for lil me :>
In between the first drawing and the second, I upgraded my drawing situation and saved up enough for a tablet! YIPPEE! I was really excited to have a much easier way to do digital art so I got really into it. So excited in fact, I was drawing faster than my brain could come up with ideas for the art in the first place. 😂 Then, I figured it would be fun to re-draw old art and see how much I’ve improved. I ended up picking my “Just Chillin’ ” drawing because I was still really pleased it got made into an actual in-game costume. 🙂
2023
You can definitely see the slight improvements. The shading exists, overall construction got better, and the line-art got sooooooo much smoother. ✨
For the 2024 redraw, I had developed a specific style for drawing poptropicans that I used for LOTS of drawings, which I applied in that year’s redraw.
2024
In that year, I discovered what layer modes were on procreate which I had A LOT of fun with. I may have gone a bit overboard with the ‘overlay’ mode on this drawing, but I think it’s a cool style and adds some pops of color! 🙂
In December 2025, I was so busy with life and touching grass (you should try it sometime, 10/10 recommend it 😝), that I COMPLETELY forgot about my re-draw tradition! Sometime early February 2026, I had some spare time and was looking at old art when rediscovered my evolutions. Instantly, I whipped up this quick addition which remains to be the most recent ‘Just Chillin’ upgrade! 🥶✏️
2025/26
For this one, I used my favorite brush, which I hadn’t for the others, and went back to the original roots for the pose inspiration. Instead of having the ice drip, it’s sticking up to one side. Another difference is finally having the addition of hair! In previous years I stubbornly didn’t add it (to stick close to the first drawing) but this year I finally caved in because… well… I like drawing hair, what else can I say? 😂✨ I also brought the scarf back from 2023. And while I still enjoy using layer modes excessively (it’s just a part of my art style at this point lol), I think it looks a little better now. 🙂
Thank you for reading along with my voyage with this drawing! I encourage you to redraw YOUR old Poptropica fan-arts and share them with the community because it’s so cool to see how much more skilled you’ve gotten over the years! 😀
Well, actually I can believe it. I put a LOT of work in this series. 😂
Each drawing took me about 20 minutes (according to Procreate’s nifty little time-tracking tool) and there were a total of… 72 emoticons. 😳
…You do the math. 😂🙏
I actually really enjoyed it all, though! And if anyone’s curious, here’s my process with Ned Noodlehead:
SketchLine ArtFlat Colors+BlushShading and LightingColor inside lines and outline for FINAL!
So that’s how I draw them! 🙂
*dramatic sigh* Well, there’s no point keeping them all from you any longer… the final batch…
ROUND 10!!
H7— Sporty RunnerA6— Wild BearB9— Ned NoodleheadGolden- E9D6- Dr. LangeD7- Ringmaster RavenE2- Pink StarC6- Lone FlipperA5— White Rock
“And… wrap that up and give it to a child on Christmas, ’cause we’re done!” 😝
Typically at this point of the post, I’d just have the normal drill of “If you want YOUR Poptropican drawn blah blah blah” but since this is the last post in the series, I would like to give a special thank you to everyone who’s supported this series! Whether you’ve been here from the very beginning, or if you just found this a week ago, I really appreciate everyone who’s contributed a Poptropican and everyone who’s left a comment. THANK YOU! 💖
Greetings, Poppie-tropicans! This weekend was the PHB’s 17th birthday, and we celebrated by announcing the winners of the Poppies, our Poptropica fan awards. We appreciate everyone for joining in on the fun this month, from nominating to voting, with almost 400 votes. Wow!
We kicked off the party with a chaotic pre-show skit right before the awards, and every author was featured in our Poppies presentation, which doesn’t happen very often! You can take a look at the video below or keep scrolling for the list of winners.
Thanks to Smart Icicle and Gentle Dolphin for the video, with pre-show skit scripted by Magic Kid and LJ.
Kudos to all the winners and nominees of the 2025 Poppies, our 11th annual round! You’re all incredible. 🥳💚
It was a shame the Poptropica common rooms wouldn’t work, so we couldn’t see each other in them, but that didn’t stop us from having fun! During the party, a group of us lingered after the announcements and played a few rounds of Gartic Phone, which has always been a great time whenever we’ve played it on the Poptropica Help Chat (PHC). Check out a few of our masterpieces! 😏
Shout-out to snoopypilots for archiving most of the drawings as GIFs.
🎨 Best Fan Art Nominees Gallery 🎨
“The Bucky Stops Here” comic by cacaocheri — read the rest here!“Behind the scenes of the end of Super Villain Island” by bashful-sword“9th Year Instagram Anniversary Drawing” by happyclonetrooper“yuri but a no romance one” by lookingforcuteartsss“Pop Villains in the Arcane style” by maryanntheconqueror“Holmes” by Snoopypilots“Super Power Island Villains” by thecaterpainter
Thank you for being with us on the blue carpet this year! It was wonderful celebrating Poptropica’s legacy once more, along with the PHB’s 17th birthday. Just one more year until adulthood! Until then, Poptropicans…
The voting poll is now closed.Stay tuned for our recap!
Greetings Poppie-tropicans! The nominations for the 2025 Poppies are in, and it’s time to *cast your votes*. The polls will remain open until Friday, July 18, so make sure to participate before then! 🗳️☑️
Also, come join us for our Poppies party on the PHC Discord server on SATURDAY,July 26 @ 7PM EST/ 4PM PST where we’ll be announcing the results, chatting, and having fun. 🥳 We’ll also try hanging out in the Arcade on Poptropica, though it’s reportedly been glitchy lately, so we’ll see how that goes. If you’re in a different time zone, use a time zone converter to find out when the festivities will be happening where you live.
Plus, don’t forget to come in your most stylish attire to really get into the spirit of things. (After all, the PHB will be celebrating its 17th birthday this month on July 26!) We hope to see you there! 💙
🏝️ Poptropica Help Blog 🗺️ 