Non-Member Outfit Ideas : Pandas

Hey jammers! Panda here again, and this time with a super exciting post!

I decided to give my panda a new look today, and as I searched through all of my non-member items and was annoyed to find that practically nothing looked good on my panda! And since the panda was my first animal (and I'm literally the most sentimental person on the planet) I was not about to delete my adorable, chubby panda to get a bunny instead, even though everything looks good on the bunny.

So I pushed aside my frustrations and decided to turn it into a game: how many somewhat attractive outfits could I come up with for you guys, or at least, all of you guys that have pandas and are on the lookout for some cute non-member outfit ideas!

And here's what I came up with...

Cozy in Pink

To create this outfit, you only need a pink holiday sweater and a pink tiara.

-------------------


Aspect of Nature
 

All that you need to purchase/own for this outfit is a rare head flower (a normal head flower would work as well) and a green ribbon scarf.


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Pink Buttery Fluttery Butterfly

To recreate this ADORABLE outfit on your own, you'll just need a pink butterfly hair accessory and a pink ribbon scarf.

I hope that those helped you in some way! ^.^ If you liked this outfit ideas segment make sure to comment below "PANDAS ARE AWESOME" so that we can make more segments for different animals! Also, comment below requesting which animals you'd like to see in the upcoming segments! 

-Panda

How to Create Epic Animal Jam Graphics : Part 1

Hey jammers! I'm back again today with the very first part in our awesome How to Make Epic Animal Jam Graphics 20-part series! If you didn't see the introduction post yet, make sure to hop on over here to check it out.

Today we'll be covering what tools I use for graphic-making. Wait. Let me rephrase that. We'll be covering all of the tools that I know of that you can use for graphic-making. First I'll share which ones that I use, and then you'll see which other ones you can use.

Sound good?

Okay, let's get started! :D

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Tools I Use:

For Graphics:

Photoshop Elements 13 (Paid)

Wacom Intuos Drawing Tablet (Paid)

Pixlr (Free)

For Signatures/Headers/Commissions:

 Google Drawings in Google Drive (Free)

Photoshop Elements 13 (Paid)

Other Tools:

PicMonkey (Free)

Gimp (Free)

Photoshop (Paid)

Illustrator (Paid)

--------

You'll see the rest of this series coming up in the next few weeks. But here's the schedule again real quick so that you can see what other goodness is coming up:

Introduction

Day 1: What Tools I Use for Graphic-Making (that's this post!)

Day 2: Basics of Graphic-Making

Day 3: Using the Instant Alpha Tool on a Mac to Get Transparent Graphics

Day 4: Using Pixlr to Create Transparent Graphics

Day 5: Using Photoshop to Create Transparent Graphics

Day 6: Creating Colored Background Graphics

Day 7: Using Filters to Change Colors of Graphics

Day 8: Creating Graphic Manipulations/Posters/Thumbnails etc.

Day 9: Creating Sidebar Images

Day 10: Creating Signatures

Day 11: Creating Blog Headers

Day 12: Creating 'Grab My Button' Codes

Day 13: Picking Color Schemes

Day 14: Creating Gradient Text in Photoshop

Day 15: Using Clipping Masks in Photoshop

Day 16: Selecting the Perfect Graphic-Making Images/Locations

Day 17: Creating Graphics of Animals

Day 18: Creating Graphics of Objects/Animals With Busy Backgrounds

Day 19: My Favorite Fonts to Use When Photo-Editing

Day 20: Ways to Use Graphics

Hope that makes you excited! :D

-Panda

Make sure to keep on viewing the blog so that we can reach our goal of 90,000 views before 2016! I know we can do it!

Also, make sure to volunteer for being a temporary holiday author on the blog! Learn more here.

Happy Thanksgiving + Graphics

Hey jammers! I hope that you're all having an EPIC Thanksgiving so far, and I sure do encourage you to eat as much food as possible. ;)

To celebrate this awesome holiday, I whipped up 3 graphics for you that you can use on your blog and in your designs without credit.

by awesomepanda868 (no credit required)

by awesomepanda868 (no credit required)

by awesomepanda868 (no credit required)

So I hope that you like those! Again, I hope that you have an amazing Thanksgiving and eat tons of yum-yum food!

-Panda

How to Create Epic Animal Jam Graphics : Introduction

Hey jammers! I'm super pumped to announce the beginning of an epic new series! When I sent out a form a while back asking what kinds of content and tutorials you guys wanted to see, a graphics course was highly requested. But since I don't really collect rares as much as I used to, I didn't think it would be fair for me to demand a price for all of this juicy graphic-making information. So I decided to make it a free series for all of you to enjoy!

A lot of you said that you didn't just want the basics of graphic-making and that you wanted to know EVERYTHING. Filters, different colored backgrounds, transparent backgrounds, animal graphics... everything. Hence this MEGA 20-part series on creating graphics! Also, since I am no longer doing commissions, I thought I'd show all of you how to DIY most of the things that I would have done for you in the commissions!

You'll see this series coming up in the next few weeks. But here's the schedule real quick so that you can see what's coming up:

Introduction (that's this post!)

Day 1: What Tools I Use for Graphic-Making

Day 2: Basics of Graphic-Making

Day 3: Using the Instant Alpha Tool on a Mac to Get Transparent Graphics

Day 4: Using Pixlr to Create Transparent Graphics

Day 5: Using Photoshop to Create Transparent Graphics

Day 6: Creating Colored Background Graphics

Day 7: Using Filters to Change Colors of Graphics

Day 8: Creating Graphic Manipulations/Posters/Thumbnails etc.

Day 9: Creating Sidebar Images

Day 10: Creating Signatures

Day 11: Creating Blog Headers

Day 12: Creating 'Grab My Button' Codes

Day 13: Picking Color Schemes

Day 14: Creating Gradient Text in Photoshop

Day 15: Using Clipping Masks in Photoshop

Day 16: Selecting the Perfect Graphic-Making Images/Locations

Day 17: Creating Graphics of Animals

Day 18: Creating Graphics of Objects/Animals With Busy Backgrounds

Day 19: My Favorite Fonts to Use When Photo-Editing

Day 20: Ways to Use Graphics

Hope that makes you excited! :D

-Panda

 Make sure to keep on viewing the blog so that we can reach our goal of 90,000 views before 2016! I know we can do it!

Also, make sure to volunteer for being a temporary holiday author on the blog! Learn more here.

How to Make Custom YouTube Thumbnails : A Tutorial

Hey jammers! :D Wow, I've actually succeeded in playing Animal Jam for three days in a row... and blogging two days in a row! :D

Anyways... a lovely jammer emailed me asking for a custom YouTube thumbnails tutorial. Unfortunately they emailed me a couple of weeks ago when I had forgotten to check my email for awhile, and I'm not sure if they're still looking for a response. Nonetheless, I figured that some of you YouTubers out there might still find this tutorial helpful, and if you know anyone who'd like to learn how to do this as well, make sure that you share this post with them as well!

But without me rambling anymore, let's get into the tutorial!

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To start, you're going to want to open up PicMonkey. If you don't know what PicMonkey is, it's a free, online photo-editing program. You can pay $4.99/month for more advanced features, but those extra features aren't necessary in this tutorial. 

Note: You can also use Pixlr or any form of Photoshop/Photoshop Elements, but since PicMonkey is the most capable free platform that I know of, I'll be demonstrating with it instead.

Then, click on the "Edit for free!" link at the top right corner of the page.

Once you do that, you'll likely end up with a screen that looks like this:

Now it's time to resize the canvas so that it is the proper size for the YouTube thumbnail. In order for your thumbnail to fit appropriately into the YouTube thumbnail container, it must be 1280 pixels in width and 720 pixels in height, or 1280 x 720.

Your screen should look something like this once you've resized your canvas to fit the thumbnail size:

We've got the "bones" of our thumbnail down, and now it's time for the fun part! Start your thumbnail by adding a cool Animal Jam background for the background of your thumbnail. You can find some on this page.

To add your background to your thumbnail, first download the background and then go to the "Overlays" tab on the side (it's shaped like a butterfly) and select the "Your Own" option and upload it to PicMonkey.

Now all you have to do is resize it to fit the canvas better:

Starting to look more Animal Jam-y after adding that background, right?

Then, you'll want to add some text explaining what you video is about. Go to the "Text" tab (it's says "Tt") select a font and type out what you video is about. I suggest making the font BIG since this thumbnail will be shrunk when actually uploaded onto YouTube, so you'll want to ensure that people can read your thumbnail from a distance.

Once you've added the text and styled it the way you would like to, you can add tons of fun graphics and icons to your thumbnail! I personally didn't choose to add graphics for this example thumbnail because I chose for the text to be so large, but adding in graphics of your own animals, of things that appear in your video or just of random, cute animal graphics are great ideas to catch potential viewers' eyes!

After you're sure that your thumbnail is exactly the way you would like it to be, you can save it! Make sure that you save it in either the medium or highest resolution to avoid the thumbnail from getting too blurry.

And there you have it! Your very own thumbnail! Of course, yours will probably be way better than mine, because I just whipped this up randomly as an example. :P

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I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial! 

-Panda

The Official Animal Jam Handbook + Holiday Authors?

Hey guys!! I'm trying to get back into the groove of posting and have several ideas that I would like to present to you guys!

First of all, I was wondering if you guys would like if I made an Animal Jam Handbook. In the handbook, I would include basically all of the information that you would need to get started in Animal Jam, and would reveal the locations of several glitches, secret areas and prime fun places. Also, I might includes special adventure guides, video walkthroughs of some things and much more. If you would be interested in something like this, make sure to comment below!

The other thing I wanted to ask you guys was if any of you would like to volunteer to become seasonal authors! Basically, if you don't want to be a regular author on the blog but still want to contribute in some way, you can sign up (click here to sign up!) to be a holiday author! The holiday authors will take turns posting the daily Jamaaliday gifts every day during the month of December when one of the other authors or I cannot. You'd only have to make a post (however long or short you would like) a couple of times a month probably. Again, if you're interested, make sure to sign up by clicking here!

That's all my news for today jammers, but make sure to keep on having fun in Jamaa!

-Panda

Also, make sure to keep on viewing the blog so that we can reach our goal of 90,000 views before 2016 begins! If we reach that goal, I might just have to host a special contest, giveaway and party!

Blog's Birthday + Graphic

Hey jammers! It's Panda here (long time no see!) and I'm here today with a bunch of randomness.

First off, I just wanted to point out that the blog's birthday was on October 20th! Wow, it's so weird that I started this blog over a year ago... #sentimental moment. So, happy belated birthday, AJGC!

Secondly, I cannot believe that we are at 60,000 views! Can we try and get to 90,000 by 2016? You guys are so awesome, and I know that we can do it! :D

And third, I wanted to share with you a graphic I made:

by awesomepanda868 (no credit required)

It is of the docks in the Twists and Turns adventure. You can use it without credit if you like, but credit would be greatly appreciated. 

Also, my friend Lovely and I were playing the Twists and Turns adventure earlier, and we had a ton of fun with those adorable wooden cut-outs!

Okay jammers, I promise to post again soon, but I have to go now! Have a lovely day! :D

-Panda

Scorpian + Rainbow + Pray for Paris

The Scorpion Claws have arrived to match the helmet. They're sold in Epic Wonders (and very expensive)

Sadly, one of the most loved items, the Rainbow Cloud, will be gone in ten days

Most people already know about the Spanish and French servers, but did you know that AJ is also available in Portuguese and German?

Speaking of French......

For those of you that don't know what happened yesterday in Paris, over a 140 people were killed in terrorist attacks. #PrayforParis

Hate to end on a sad note, but northig else has happened, so this is goodbye for now...

Scorpians + Jupiter + Space Phantoms?

What
is
that


Are they trying to give five year olds nightmares?

A Jupiter throne has arrived in the Astronomy Shop in Sol Arcade

 

Fun fact: Sol is Latin for sun, so it makes sense they decided to make a space themed store.

 

What else about the arcade relates to it's name?

 

Well, the building is shaped like a rocket

 

The wallpaper resembles the night sky

 

The game machine shop is shaped like a UFO.

 

 

Look closer, and you'll notice the phantom logos.

 

Another notion that phantoms are from space. Lets search for more evidence! We don't even have to leave the arcade yet.

 

A spaceship battling phantoms. You couldn't be more obvious!

 

 

Lets play to look for more clues!

 

 

 

You're in a spaceship, trying to stop a phantom invasion. And where are these phantoms invading from?

 

Let's try another game!

 

 

 

How did the phantom get in the sky? It fell out of it's spaceship!

 

The last piece of incriminating evidence is right here:

 

 

Already looks like robot technology

 

 

Wait a minute.

THAT PROVES IT!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



 



 Double gems are available on Double Up

On the other hand, tomorrow is World Kindness Day

Nothing actually interesting is happening, so this is bye for now!