Animal Crossing – Reimagined

DA Upload Date: March 31, 2021

A piece I made last month that I decided to upload now, to celebrate my one-year anniversary playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, one of the few silver linings of the ocean of diarrhea that was 2020.

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I’ve seen video games as a potential art form for years, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons was truly the point where I began to really view the appeal of the medium on the same level as cinema and television. When the theaters went dark and the sets went empty, the pop culture community turned to video games, one of the few forms of escapism left as COVID-19 made its way outside of China and ravaged the rest of the world. And one of the most popular games to turn to, was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the fifth mainline game in Nintendo’s life simulation series that began on the N64 (in Japan) and GameCube (everywhere else). The series had been steadily rising in popularity since New Leaf, but New Horizons‘ tone of calm and escapism at a time when society had turned upside-down, skyrocketed the series into a cultural phenomenon. Over 31 million copies of ACNH have been sold worldwide as of this writing, placing it as one of the top 20 best-selling video games ever made. I myself have logged over 240 hours of play on the game since I started playing this day last year.

For anyone that hasn’t been paying attention to my Twitter or these descriptions, my island is called Elavnurg, and my current villager lineup is: Clyde, Drake, Hopper, Paolo, Raymond, Mott, Winnie, Leonardo, O’Hare, and Canberra. The latter of whom is my birthday twin, and got to agree to settle on my island on March 20th of this year… the one-year anniversary of ACNH! Yay!

There’s not much to talk about regarding the artwork. I did it as a college assignment where we had to reimagine a company branding or fictional character in our own style. I chose to reimagine Tom Nook, Isabelle, Blathers, KK Slider and Redd as characters fit for the Grunvaliverse. And I got positive reception on all of them! They especially liked my take on KK Slider, with the long hair and soul patch. Which he would totally have if he were imagined in an art style similar to mine, and don’t act like I’m wrong.

I am planning on doing a sequel piece to this, so be on the lookout for that. But for now, I’m gonna focus on April. Which is Autism Awareness Month, and considering that Gilda is neurodivergent, I am going to be making an artwork addressing autism. Probably an anti-Autism Speaks comic. But until then, see you next time!

DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StormyAdlerPoG
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phoenix_of_grunvale/
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/phoenixofgrunvale
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCO…
Discord: Contact me by my tag (Stormy Adler, P.o.G.#1752) for an invite to my server.

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Animal Crossing is owned by Nintendo.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 6480×2160 (aspect ratio 3:1).