Part 1 - Interior Design
Part 2 - Patterns and Designs
Part 3 - More about Patterns and Designs
Part 4 - Introduction to Town Decor
Part 5 - Pattern Design in Town Decor
Part 6 - Gardening in Town Decor
Onwards!
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It's graduation night, guys. I'm officially a graduate of high school.
So what's more logical than attempting to make a new post about something half the world doesn't care about?
The last time I went ahead and talked about Animal Crossing: New Leaf, I talked a lot about the interior design aspect of the game and if it could be considered art or not. Being that I've had several weeks to ponder the answer, my response to this question is: I don't know. Still! I mean, you'd think that working on taking finals and readying things for graduation would leave PLENTY of time for deep thinking, but . . .
Okay okay, I get it; all sarcasm aside, I actually HAVE come to somewhat of an answer, but because exploring is much more fun than just giving my flat-out opinion, I figured I would tackle another aspect of the game. I have a few posts planned out, of course, but I figured I'd going to this area next:
Lady Gaga, eat your heart out.
Fashion! (Yes yes, guilty as charged, I MUCH prefer this to her more current "Fashion!" song on ARTPOP. Sue me!) One of the aspects of the game has to do with being able to change your appearance, i.e. hairstyle, shirts, pants, hats, even your socks and shoes! It leaves a lot of openness for your own personal style, which can be super fun as you go through the game. You can even make your own designs and leave them for others to nab and wear as well!
An orange pixie cut, a pirate hat, green tie-dye, grey skirt . . . I'm not winning any fashion points.
As you can see to the right of the picture, I've made a fair amount of my own designs and put them up for other characters to grab. That's why I believe that I'm more than slightly qualified to talk about making your OWN designs, which is what I want to focus on. After all, my question is about your OWN creation in the game, not just using what the game provides in terms of clothes. It's HOW you use your tools, not strictly what you are given, after all. With that said, I believe it's best to go into how you can make personal designs yourself, so I'll give a quick rundown.
This was my design board as I began to get pictures for this post. D- . . . Don't ask about what's going on at the upper right. Just don't ask.
Like what you see? This is the design board, accessible via the bottom screen of the DS. All of those designs, excepting the bottom left from Bumbury, were made by me. Not too shabby, right? (Don't answer that). From here, you can start off by making your own unique, single-sided designs. I'll show you what I mean in a moment, so let's jump right into the creation screen.
By the way, I just want it to be known that it is harder than necessary to get these bottom-screenshots. Come on, Nintendo!
This is the typical design screen. Fancy, huh? I did the crappy thing of forgetting to count how many pixels are allowed, but I'm going to suggest that you get around 30x30 pixels. That's the space you get to work with in the center; the upper-left shows what you'll be seeing in the upper screen (a shirt) and an overview of what your design looks like zoomed out. You can also change from gridded to natural using the button at the lower right, which also has a redo button.
To be honest, I don't even use most of these. I maybe use the whole filler and the small pen tool the majority of the time.
The upper-right corner is the tool button, and when pressed, it leads you to all these options. From upper left to lower right, left to right - you have the whole filler, line, bucket, small pen, striped filler, circle, heart, medium pen, polka dots, square, star, and large pen. To be honest, I don't use all of those - I'm sort of a minimalist that way. But it's perfectly possible to make a good design using more of the tools, too!
Your palette options!
To the right, you get to see your color palette. You're only allowed fifteen colors per image, sadly, which causes a bit of a restriction on what you can really do. But you get several different palettes to choose from, too, so that's a benefit as well. More than that, though . . .
Actually, that's a rather pretty, random blue I picked out. Mm, very nice.
. . . you can modify and customize your palette, too. So there's that.
Dude, this is totally going to make me so famous.
For the sake of demonstration, I decided to do a really simple red-and-green design, which I probably should've made purple-and-yellow or blue-and-orange just to escape the cliched-ness of Christmas colors (I didn't mean it! I swear!). Once finished, you (obviously) hit the "done" button, where you can name your design and return to the design board.
I'm so creative and original with my design names.
Once I've designed it, I can choose to do a couple of different things with it. Unfortunately, there ARE more options rather than just wearing it, but I was a dumb-dumb and was inside a shop (the Able Sisters, which you'll see more of in a moment), so all you can see right now is the "Wear" and "Redesign" options. If I choose to wear it, though . . .
Ha . . .! I am SO the new Gracie with this look!
. . . I can wear it on my character, as a shirt, hat . . .
Got a villager in this shot. Bill, represent!
. . . or even an umbrella!
I had to reenter the shop again . . . and, uh, what do you mean I changed back into my previous attire? I didn't recycle an image out of forgetfulness, I swear!
Talk to Mabel (which I did NOT get an adequate screenshot for), and you're given some options.
The benefits of making the design as you saw above is that A) it costs no money, and B) the design repeats onto pretty much anything. It's very versatile like that. By talking to Mabel in the Able Sisters' shop (the blue hedgehog is who I mean), you can even save all of your designs so you never lose them, which is an AWESOME feature in this game!
But what if you want to make a different design? Like a dress, or a long-sleeved shirt, or a tank (the nonviolent kind, not the warfaring type)? As I believe is exclusive to New Leaf, you can now make pro designs, allowing you to make more designs specific to dresses, hats, shirts, etcetera! The downside is that it does cost 500 bells to make them, but in my case, it's just a drop in the bucket, so it's not that big of a deal.
Is it a bird? A plane? No . . . it's the benefit of making a pro design!
The biggest difference between pro and normal designs, though, is that you can customize all sides/parts of a piece of clothing. In this case, I'm making my previous design a sleeveless shirt, but by working in a pro design, it's allowing me to customize the back. Which means I go from my short-sleeved, normal design . . .
So much swagger, guys. Wait, but where's my pirate hat?!
. . . to a tank top perfect for supper- I mean, summer!
A back view, which is impossible to see because I couldn't zoom in the camera at the time.
It might be hard to tell in the above image, but I used the benefits of pro designs to take the heart off of the back of the shirt. Cool, right? Makes it look more like a shirt and less like a repeating design. The downside to the pro designs is that they're only intended for one use, i.e. ONLY as a shirt or hat, not both, but it's worth it for all of the cool designs.
And of course, Animal Crossing is all about sharing, and let's face it, I can't keep THIS GOOD of a design to myself. I would love to share it with you guys . . . if only there was a way! But wait . . . there's a sewing machine over there . . .
To answer your question: YES, I DID just share my awesome shirt with y'all. I'm pretty sure that's a prerequisite for AWESOME, because with this, a whole new, improved community for Animal Crossing has sprung up.
Part three, still on custom designs, will be coming up in a little bit.
***
Thanks for reading, you guys! Considering all of the work I've been putting into these posts (including the ones you haven't even seen yet!), it's only fair that I let you know what sources I've been using. Especially for those of you who might already be playing the game, I figure these might be nice for you to peruse.
DOOD Crossing 64: This guy-playing-as-a-girl isn't just pretty hilarious when it comes to posting about his town, but is also really good at designing his own stuff using the pro designs. Even his village and houses are awesome! Go check him out, because he's got street cred.
Bumbury the Beautiful: This player, going by the villager name Lady(star)Bro, has tons of patterns figured out and makes absolutely beautiful designs! I'll be talking a little more about her work at a later date, but for now, I did want to credit her because I did have one of her designs in my design storage. You can find that pattern here, as well as the rest of her QR codes on the same site.
If you have any questions, or you if want to see more of my own patterns, feel free to shoot me a note! I'm always up for shooting the breeze with a fellow art-teest.
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