Go to Jamaa Township on Grande

IT'S BEEN AT LEAST 3 DAYS AND MONEKY52 IS STILL DANCING

Your mission? Go to Jamaa Township on Grande and cheer him on!

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I sound like a broken record, but I really am sorry for not posting for so long. Animal Jam and blogging about Animal Jam are incredibly comforting to me and are things I care about deeply, but of course transitions in life are always hard for me, so I've needed some time to catch up and get used to things.

Also my brother is always stealing my computer to play Minecraft lol

I'll be back to regular posting as soon as I can! There are just some things I need to get done first before I can focus enough 

See you in Jamaa!!!

~DoomyPanda

A Terrifyingly Tall Birthday Cake

Hey Jammers! The beginning of September when I start school is always a strange and hopeful time for me, especially now that I'm going to a completely different school. 

Still, even though it's finally the end of my first week, I feel more energized than exhausted, so I thought I'd fill you all in on the highlights of yesterday's update!

It's 2019's final Wild Weekend! From this point on, we'll be back to our normal schedule of biweekly Thursday updates.

You can flip items upside down now. Not that exciting, in my opinion, but it's something new to experiment with!

Flip a bowl upside down, what do you get?

Ceiling bowl B)

I also noticed that Long Shot is double gems for the next couple week. I like Long Shot... it's soothing, in a way, to just watch an armadillo fly for miles and wonder when they'll slow down.

I think the first time I played Long Shot I got lucky and the armadillo flew for 10 whole minutes XD

EDIT: Snakes are coming to Play Wild!

Now... how long will it be until they come to desktop AJ? o_o

Animal Jam's NINTH birthday is here/is coming up soon! The tradition, as in every year, is a code giving everyone a special cake that acts as a sort of puzzle.

To start, click this ice cream to add the second layer to the cake:

Next, click this wand to make the third:

And click the farthest left candle to add the blue layer:

And so on...

And so on...

And– WOW it's getting tall:

"THIS IS NOT EVEN MY FINAL FORM"

AAAAAAAA

And finally, click the top candle to make the cake burst into flames! 

In my opinion... this isn't really my favorite cake. It's pretty generic and doesn't feel as Animal Jam-y as it should.

But it's the ninth!!!! Nine years of AJ... wow. Let's wish Animal Jam many more years <3

Here are a couple of my favorite AJ b-day cakes from over the years:

I like the 1st Birthday Cake the best because it looks nice on its own without having to be clicked a million times (though that process is kinda fun)

I also like this "phase" of the 4th Birthday Cake :)

Happy 9th birthday, Animal Jam!

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Still working on the new layout– recently got a nice stylus to use with an art app, so that will help me draw graphics easier than with a mouse! I hope to work on it this weekend

See you all in Jamaa!!!

More Progress + Small News Thing

Hey Jammers! Wow I have not been as productive as I've wanted to be this week. Or last week, for that matter. I guess as school rapidly approaches for me, I've subconsciously decided to be as lazy as possible in preparation for the onslaught of school work ^^;

However! I did get some progress down with the new header. Take a look:

It's just a screenshot, so that checkerboard pattern won't be in the final. I'm probably gonna add a rounded border and some leafy accents to make it nice :D

For the second quick part of this quick post, here's a part of a news article involving WildWorks (and kids app makers in general) that you may find interesting:

So basically, Apple is now requiring kids apps to not run advertising or external analytics software. With WildWorks, AJPW and the AJ desktop app don't have ads, but another app "Tag With Ryan" is completely dependent on ads and will probably shut down. Honestly I don't care about that in particular– I really dislike the people making money off of toy-review videos for kids on YouTube, it just feels exploitative.

HOWEVER, Play Wild and the AJ desktop app might still be affected by the new Apple policies! It wasn't entirely clear, and the passage above is the only part that mentions WildWorks, but analytics software is used to monitor how Jammers use those apps (to prevent inappropriate behavior, see what features are most popular, etc.). 

The new Apple policies are banning external analytics software– I'm not sure the difference between internal and external analytics software, but it might mean that at least on WildWorks' apps, data can't be collected the same way.

Is this kind of analytics software also on browser AJ? Would this new Apple policy mean that the desktop app and the browser are managed differently?

Hmm....

I'm gonna go back to being lazy now. Seeya guys soon!

~DoomyPanda

Nature Items + Odd Page

Hey Jammers! I'm here to talk about this week's update– which is actually pretty nice/interesting! 

But first, I wanna show you my current progress on the new header, because I finished the lettering yesterday:

It might stay blue, but I also might make different colored versions.

The easy part is now just choosing a font for the 'Stream' text to be, an AJ related background for the header, and any extra stuff to make it pretty :3

And now! The update:

It's another Wild Weekend, but this is one of the better ones because it's all about natural items! Honestly though, we should have at least 2/3 of all items be nature-inspired. It's a game about other animals and plants!

Here's the items:

You can change the symbols on the broken tree and the dirt marking to a river symbol, a lightning symbol, a star, a spiral...

I imagine these items would be helpful for Warrior-related roleplays (those are still popular, right?)

You know what would be a good idea for one of these special designs? Instead of solid-colored patterns, gradient ones. That may be popular.

The Fantasy Castle den is back in store for gems!

I remember when it first came out– it was one of the first really big and complicated dens in Jamaa, and in my opinion its one of the nicest looking ones. Sometimes the newer dens that come out can be... a little oversized.

I may actually get a membership just so I can have a fantasy castle for a bit :P

Some birds are back! 

The toucan mini-book doesn't have as many cool illustrations/animations as say, the panda mini-book, but it's still worth a look!

Owls are back~

The Summer Eggstravaganza pets are flying/skittering away for the season, but keep an eye out for the Fall pets!

This is the main reason why I called this update 'interesting'– what do you think this page is hinting? 

Last of all, new armor (that won't protect you very well) is here, as well a returning den item theme.

I was gonna go into the other new/clearance items, but I got some forms I need to fill out for school, so I'm gonna end this post here!

See you in Jamaa, and I hope your summer has been great! (or winter, if you're in the southern hemisphere :P)

Obscure Beta Discovery + Workin' On Stuff

Hey Jammers! I was planning on posting about the wild weekend today, but I honestly don't have much to say. Hallfall (that's still your user, right?) made a more extensive post about it on The Animal Jam Digest along with a cool NM den idea, so you should check that out!

So, I haven't posted as often as I would have wanted this month (and for most of this summer, it seems), and it's because I'm working on some creative projects that I won't have time to do once school starts for me– one of which is designing a new layout for this blog. It shouldn't be that hard, but I'm so picky about aesthetics that I'm making my own graphics and lettering lol

(Temporary color, temporary background, temporary positions, etc. Just wanted to show my progress w/ the lettering. I think the "stream" will be an actual font.)

I'm kinda sick of Tiki Island so I'm trying to hand-copy a font that was on the AJ beta homepage that I can't find anywhere else:

That's a graphic from the help section. 

The goal of re-doing my layout is so I'm more motivated to post regularly once school starts (and so the blog looks better and works better) because older AJ graphics are just so weirdly calming. 

Another project I'm working on that's gonna take at least all day today is to start planning a story I've been wanting to write (that's unrelated to AJ). 

So yeah, I have a lot to do before school starts! I guess paradoxically, you might be getting posts more regularly once September comes around 

But back to the beta AJ help section... for I have discovered something:

So I have no clue what Zeevex is, but more importantly– What is Panda Week!?

So every week in beta testing (or soon after it, I forget if August 2010 counts as beta), one kind of animal was celebrated? Neat!

(In case you weren't aware, I use the Wayback Machine to go snooping around the beta homepage. Check it out!)

Here's a Jamaa Journal calendar I found on the Animal Jam Rush that shows a few Animal Weeks:

Interesting. Maybe the activities posted in the Jamaa Journal were similar to this:

So Guides were not only there to help, but to facilitate activities! That's so cool. (Image from here)

Dang. I wish that level of community was here today. Maybe we can take inspiration from the positivity of early AJ and make that part of how we act in Jamaa today :)

Alright guys, I'm off to go work on stuff! See you in Jamaa, and have an awesome day~