Posting Break~

Hey Jammers and non-AJ-players alike! For some reason it looks like Blogger changed the font of most of my posts from the past few years, so now everything looks weird. 

Over the years this blog's HTML code has collected tons of errors, and sometimes it doesn't mix well with new updates that come to Blogger.

And as some of you know, I've been using a test blog to work on coding a cute old-school-AJ new layout. And it's been just sitting there in-progress for an embarrassingly long period of time... *sigh* 

...which brings me to the main part of this post: a hiatus! Something kind of silly for me to announce, as a blogger who only posts about once a month anyway ^^; 

(To be fair though, monthly posting is actually pretty active compared to most blogs in the world, but that doesn't stop me from judging myself based on 2014 AJ blog standards lol)

I'm mostly just declaring a hiatus so my mind isn't yelling "WHY AREN'T YOU KEEPING THE SPIRIT OF THE AJ BLOG ALIVE!!!!!" whenever I'm trying to work on another goal. 

And I have a ton of personal goals that I want to get done this summer. Like, finishing up the new layout... finishing all my half-done animation/video editing projects... unpacking the rest of my moving boxes... and all of these things seem small, but to a depressed person like me who struggles with motivation and tons of anxiety, they feel like huge mountains to climb.  

So all this means is that I won't hold myself to posting every month until I deal with those goals above, but I'm not really going anywhere. I'll be checking and responding to comments like I normally do =)

I hope you all are having a truly nice summer/winter (depending on where you are) and that things keep getting better.

Seeya soon,

Official Free Membership Code for May 2022!

Hey Jammers! Finally, I've wrapped up my Spring semester, and now I got more time to focus on other goals. Whew...

Because of all my school work, it's actually been quite a while since I last logged into Animal Jam. Maybe over a month or two!

But I'm glad I logged in today, because hidden a handful of pages into the Jamaa Journal laid this surprise:

Nice!

Entering this code gets you two weeks of free membership, along with a Spring Small House and a Spring Bunny. The Spring Small House has usually just been in the Den Shop this time every year, but the Spring Bunny is a nice addition– particularly because nonmembers will be able to keep being a Spring Bunny after their two weeks runs out.

Glad I didn't miss this! When I don't have as much time to log in, I like to get the AJ news from Rainbow's blog, but she hasn't been posting as much these days. 

I'm going to try to be more in-the-loop this summer, as well as just have more calming times just playing the game c:

Back to the topic of this code– here are some ideas for how all y'all nonmembers can get the most out of a temporary membership:

– Dress up your nonmember pets at the Pet Stop, because you'll be able to keep what you add to them!

– While you're at it, make your pets sparkly at the Pet Wash– which is such a cute silly thing that it should already be for everyone >:T

– Make some Masterpieces, because you can use your diamonds instead of MP tokens!

– Send typed Jam-a-Grams to people you haven't seen in a while :)

– Go into the Township and ask people to write stuff on your Jammer Wall 

And finally...

– Have fun and be yourself ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Pffft

See you in Jamaa!

An Earth Day Post~

Happy Earth Day! It's DoomyPanda again, reporting live from the library where I should be doing work, but just don't want to right now. 

It sure has been a while since I last posted. Probably like many of you, I've been dealing with final projects and just trying to get all my work in before the semester ends. It's annoying how school can sometimes zap you of motivation, but I think I'm still learning a lot about animation, at least.

I'm pretty excited about this summer– if all goes well, I'm going to be spending lots of time outside helping with local wildlife/ecology research C:

So, speaking of which, I thought I'd use this small window of time to share those photos I mentioned from when I visited a desert region last month:

The photo quality better not turn out as bad as it looks in the post editor...

So this right here is a cool nest on top of some cactus! I see a feather so I'm thinking it is a bird's home. Not sure if you can tell, but this nest was actually pretty big– I remember it being like a constructed tunnel with plenty of shade inside. The mud it was lined with probably also helped keep it cool.

And here we have two cool lizards just hanging out and following each other around in the sun. One of them came up to me for a second, actually! I had a metal water bottle with me, so maybe she thought it looked interesting? Ah well, I will never know for sure. 

A bird on a very tall cactus! Not the best photo quality, but I think it would look interesting if it was a painting or something. 

And finally, many frogs. 

–––

When I think about Earth Day, or the Earth in general, I get a bit overwhelmed sometimes. There are so many pressing issues, and so many of them feel so big that I don't even know where to begin. I bet you might feel that way sometimes too!

All of these problems and challenges are simply too big for one person to solve all on their own. Every person has a limited amount of energy to fight back with. 

That's why I think one of the best ways for people who care to make a positive change is to use their own skills and passion to help in the small ways we can, and unite with others who care to combine those skills and passions into a stronger force for change. 

Basically, there are some great things individual people can do to make the world a better place, one small piece at a time, and when we encourage and support each other to make these little changes, those small pieces add up to something big.

That's why one of my interests is planting native plants. You might only have a small amount of space to work with, but you can turn what would otherwise be a boring patch of cut grass into a place where bees and butterflies can have enough nectar to eat. You're helping them survive and thrive!

So, if there was one simple action I'd say is a great way to make the Earth a better place, I recommend you research what wildflowers would be considered native to your area, and see if you can use the space you have to plant some. 

I got some seeds online recently and I can't wait to plant them next week >:)

And if you're interested in this at all and have any questions, feel free to let me know in the comments! ^.^

Once again, happy Earth Day, and I'll see you in Jamaa :)

Speculating About Fer.al and Cinder

Helloooo once again! I'm back. I also happen to be back from a trip I went on with my family. I don't travel much, and especially now with the pandemic it was pretty weird to be going different places, but it actually went well! I saw some cool cactuses, birds and lizards in the desert. Once I move the photos over to my laptop, I'll post a couple here in case you might wanna see c:

For this post, I wanted to talk about some WildWorks related things I've been thinking about. 

But first of all, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, happy Spring!! 

Flowers haven't really started blooming yet where I am and it's still kinda cold, but it'll be nice when plants do decide to start springing back.

Now, let's jump right into this...

After less than two years of being in the beta stage, Fer.al has shut down. 

It was something the player base was fearing, but not totally expecting. Shortly after WildWorks began promoting Cinder, the CEO said this in an interview: 

"Stacey wrote that Cinder will be 'drawing upon the scaffolding of Feral,' a Wildworks game where players control their own mythical animals. Feral won’t be adopting NFT and blockchain gaming, as 'the Feral community deserves to evolve on its own path, and crypto-gaming isn’t what its members signed up for.' Cinder may visually resemble Feral in some aspects, 'but the resemblance ends there.'"

– quote from this article

That article was published on January 14th of this year. On February 18th, WildWorks announced Fer.al's shut down. 

I personally wasn't as drawn to Fer.al as Animal Jam Classic, but with all the time and artistic effort put into that game, PLUS the community that grew from it, it really does feel like a waste.

This makes me think that there might be a few possibilities:

1. Fer.al was meant from the start to only be active until Cinder was done. 

2. The huge negative backlash to Cinder's release made WildWorks realize that it was gonna be a struggle to get anyone excited about it. So... they shut Fer.al down in the hopes that the players most sad about the shutdown would migrate to Cinder to experience the same aesthetic.

3. Too expensive to keep both games going at the same time?

I don't know, the idea that Fer.al was always just testing grounds for Cinder just feels weird to me.

WildWorks having pretty much just copy-pasted Fer.al's Shattered Bay into Cinder (see screenshots above), makes me feel like Cinder was mostly just stitched together out of assets originally meant for Fer.al. 

The Cinder homepage mentions that Cinder has been in production for about two years, but I wonder... 

This screenshot which I posted a couple of months ago was from a Jamaa Journal page in AJPW from April 2021. If this page echoes WildWorks' viewpoint at that time... then maybe the concept for Cinder is actually a lot more recent.

Maybe the 'two years in production' refers to Fer.al's production. That game did serve as the foundation Cinder was built off of.

Eh... not just built off of. That's literally the blood lake from Fer.al on the Cinder homepage. 

As I've been writing this post, I've been doing a lot of research and I stumbled upon something that might give some more clarity:

According to this article, WildWorks invested 6 million dollars in Fer.al over its two-year development, and they didn't think the game was making enough money for that investment. 

Now I'm thinking that Cinder came about for a simple reason: WildWorks just needed money, and they thought an NFT game would be the way to get it. 

I found this on the Cinder homepage:

('Coffers' means funds btw)

Pre-production of Cinder probably mostly refers to the production of Fer.al. So, the money players spend on NFTs in the game is needed to raise the money to keep Cinder in development. 

I don't know much about game development, so I don't know if that actually means anything... but it seems to me that, yeah, Cinder was thought up more recently than two years ago. 

...

This is tiring to write about...

I'm gonna go eat something now, and I hope you do too. 

This was a long post >.<

Byeeee

Art for Popcorn!

Hiya Jammers! I hope you're all doing well today. My laptop's losing charge, so this will just be a short post to upload the art of Popcornpizza25's AJ red panda that they won in the raffle!

I hope ya like it :>

If you're Popcorn, this art is just for you to use as you wish!

Whew... this drawing is such a huge first for me. I get so nervous about drawing animals, especially if they're sort of stylized, so I rarely end up with complete-feeling artworks of them. Animals are just so cool and I feel like I can't really capture that coolness in a drawing xD

But I tried, and I think I'm pretty happy with how this turned out! I aimed for a mix between how red pandas look on AJ and how they look in real life.

Also, aside from the initial sketch, this is also the first full drawing I've done on GIMP! I've honestly been having an easier time drawing with GIMP than I ever had with Photoshop. 

Something I learned about how to create line weight with digital art is to use an oval shaped brush instead of a circular one! I recommend you try it, if you want. 

This is also the first drawing that I made a special signature for :3

Well, that's all I got for now. I have some ideas for a couple posts, so I hope I'll be able to get to writing them after my school work is done. I have so many hours to do.... AAAAAA

See you in Jamaa!