Jeff Kinney

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**Jeff Kinney** is a Poptropica Creator, the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series, and the founder/inventor of the online virtual world, Poptropica. Coming up with the idea in 2006, his previous relationship with Pearson (Diary of a Wimpy Kid e-book) helped him in making his idea come to life.

## History

### Early career

During his college years, he created the comic *Igdoof* that ran in his campus' newspaper, *The Diamondback*. In 2004, FunBrain.com hosted a book written by Jeff entitled "Diary of a Wimpy Kid". Soon after, the e-book became a hit and a printed version was demanded by fans. Their desire was satisfied.

### Diary of a Wimpy Kid

The one book that was released online was split into three parts because of its tremendous length, and was released as three separate books titled "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules", and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw". He continues to release new Wimpy books every year or so. He creates the illustrations for these books digitally.

Years later, Wimpy Kid was made into a movie series. Three were movies were made, encompassing four books: the first, second, third, and fourth. The last two were combined into one story. A Movie Diary book was also released in which there was information about the movie and how it was made.

He also played background roles in the Wimpy Kid films.

### Poptropica's Creation

Because of Pearson's previous involvement with Jeff, it was them who he turned to when he came up with the idea for Poptropica. Him and a few others (one being Jordan Leary) began discussing the idea of the game, and in 2007 it was released to the public. He created the basic Poptropica model, as well as programmed the basis for the game.

### Home Life

He currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, Julia, and their two sons, Will and Grant. He has a full-time job as the design director of a Boston-based Internet publishing company.

## Job On Poptropica

Jeff Kinney would hold Daily Meetings with the employees on Poptropica. Jeff Kinney would talk over with his staff about ideas for Poptropica. Once an idea was created Jeff Kinney sketched it up and presented it to the staff. Then the Staff would get to work on putting their ideas into Poptropica for people to play. Jeff Kinney is also in charge of hiring/firing people for Poptropica and is in charge of external affairs (this means get permission to use books for islands, accept advertisements from companies). Jeff Kinney would also help with designing the home page using c++ and Javascript.

## Alias

While never officially announced, it is highly possible that Jeff Kinney's alias on Poptropica is Comic Kid, due to Jeff's work with comics. Comic Kid was a semi-frequent author on the Creator's Blog, and in the game is known as Ned Noodlehead. This said, Comic Kid regularly posted sneak peeks to upcoming islands, and also posted a series of comics about Ned Noodlehead as well.

You can read more about the character, Ned Noodlehead, here.

## Appearances

Jeff Kinney is the face of Poptropica, appearing in tons of promotional videos and blog posts. His first appearance was in a promotional video for Cryptids Island, in which he talked about his fascination with cryptids along with his excitement for the new island. Beyond that, Jeff has appeared dozens of times throughout Poptropica's history. This is not a complete list.

* Promotional video for Cryptids Island in 2010.
* Promotional video for the official Poptropica guide in 2011.
* Promotional blog post for the inflatable Poptropica blimp.
* Promotional blog post for Wimpy Boardwalk - a look inside the Poptropica office.
* April fools joke 2013 - Jeff Kinney fully endorses Poptropica HD-3D.
* Promotional blog post for the LEGO Cuusoo project in 2014.
* Interview with BellyFeel on Skype.

## Trivia

* Jeff Kinney allegedly came up with the idea for Poptropica while mowing his lawn.
* TIME magazine recognized Jeff as one of the most influential people of 2009.