I've seen people toil away making pixel-perfect decorations, artwork, and clothing for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but some of us aren't so ambitious. Some of us want instant satisfaction.
The Getty Center has come out with a surprisingly intuitive web-based tool to help Animal Crossing players import "custom patterns featuring artwork from famous art collections around the world."
The tool – the Animal Crossing Art Generator – can be used to pick out your favorite masterpiece, crop it down as needed, auto-generate a QR code, and import the art in New Horizons using the Nintendo Switch Online mobile app. If that's out of your comfort zone, Getty has a step-by-step walkthrough.
Some pixelated pieces work better than others, but the concept is brilliant. I love this Medusa head.
Getty's tool was made possible with the open-source Animal Crossing Pattern Tool, and you can go beyond its immediate collection, if you want – pieces from other galleries, libraries, and archives are compatible. You'll just need to find the corresponding IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) manifest URL and paste it into Getty's site. Here's a list of compatible collections.
I'm just now at the point where I've moved beyond large-scale projects to worry about my island's finer details – pathways, fences, art, getting the river to bend just so – and this tool will be instrumental.
