How to plan your Animal Crossing Islands
When you make the decision to start designing an Animal Crossing island, it can seem like a really long and complicated process. Everyone else makes these stunning and incredible islands, and here you are looking at a bare entrance and have no idea how to get into making an island that is worthy of a final dream address.
As someone who has now been designing Animal Crossing islands for three years, I have been through the process of planning a New Horizons island many times and I have made all sorts of islands in amazing themes and styles which I could only have done with a strong plan in place. Today, I’m going to show you the really easy way you can start getting a good idea of where to go with your ACNH island so that you can become a professional decorator as soon as possible.
Pick the right theme for you
The most important thing to consider before you go into designing an Animal Crossing island is what theme you are going to pick. There are so many different themes that it can become difficult to decide on one theme or you may feel like there is a pattern to everything. If you’ve heard of anything ending in “core” that’s the theme that is used in Animal Crossing so just as a brief list you can get kidcore islands, cottagecore islands, citycore, normcore, farmcore. We could be here all day listing different themes, there’s that many Animal Crossing themes. Think of these cores as general buckets. If you start looking around at different creators, you’ll find that they normally call their island one core or another and that’s just to help classify the island. When you realise this, you will notice that it’s very often not the exclusive theme a creator is working on, but it’s the label used to give you more of an idea as to the look and feel of the island.
Although, you can just stick with picking a core and going from there, I’ve found over the years that just picking a core and going with it leads to boredom in decorating because you can’t have fun with the styling of the island. Instead, what you can do is use the core as a general direction and then pick a sub-style within that which tells the story of your island. For example, rather than doing a forestcore island for my forever island, it became enchanted forestcore and rather than citycore, I did an abandoned citycore island.
Alternatively, you may find that a look within a theme is not what you want to go with, you can also recreate your favourite films or TV shows instead and make your builds reflective of scenes from your favourite media instead, if that’s what you want to do.
Whatever theme you decide to do, it has to be something that resonates with you and if you aren’t getting genuinely excited about it, then you probably need to either relook at the theme and dive deeper into what you want to make within the theme or you need to pick something else. If it is a case of you need to pick a subsect within the theme, be as specific as you can on what you are thinking as this will be the cornerstone to your island and it will be the one thing which will keep the cohesion in place so it’s really important that you are clear on what it is you are going to make before you go into it.
Now, if you watch a lot of different Animal Crossing creators, you may notice a pattern emerges across a lot of them, they start decorating seasonal islands based on the time of year that we are already in. For example, let’s say it’s June when you are reading this, a lot of creators will be making Summer style islands in June and when we get around to December, they will be making Winter and Christmas islands, but here’s the kicker that really changed the Animal Crossing for me - just because your favourite creator is working on a seasonal island or a particular theme, it does not mean that you have to do the same thing. If you want to make something else completely, you have all the permission in the world to do it and I honestly think you should make those out there islands which you want to try but no one else seems to be touching. Animal Crossing is supposed to be fun so if there’s a theme you want to try and you are scared of it, I honestly say just go for it and see what happens.
So, how do you know what is going to be best for you? If you really don’t know where to start, I would always say the best place to look for inspiration is to go into google or social media and look for pictures which match the type of look you want to make. We’re not getting any big ideas yet, we’re just looking for a general look that fits with the styling that you have in mind. Whenever you find a picture which you like whilst you are scrolling through, take a screenshot of it and put it in a place that you can find it later.
You don’t have to just look up Animal Crossing islands either, you can look for pictures from films if that’s the sort of look you like or you can take some pictures from real life places. Anything which makes you feel like it would fit with what you are trying to make your island look like take a screenshot of this because you are going to use this as inspiration to drive your next steps.
If you also have Nintendo Switch Online, you can also go visit dream addresses and take screenshots from the game to use as well. It can be anything which you want, some pretty terraforming someone has made, a clever use of items to make a build you hadn’t thought of, anything like that can also be used to serve as inspiration.
Find the perfect colour scheme for your island
When you then have a rough idea on what theme you are going to want to make and you have a ton of inspirational photos to look through, we then want to go ahead and start working on a mood board. Grab all of these pictures and dump them in a place where you can see them all. I personally use Canva which is a free tool, but you can use Powerpoint or Google Slides or any other type of programme that lets you see all of the pictures you have in one place.
When you have all of the pictures in, the next thing you should do is take a look at all of your inspiration and check for any consistent colours which stand out to you. You may find there’s just one colour in there, but there may be two or three in there, no matter what you are working with, it’s okay. This set of colours which stand out is going to be the colour scheme you have on your island and it matters because when you start decorating your island knowing what colours are going to work together allows you to have a bit more of a direction than just the theme on its own.
Although you can make your Animal Crossing island just one colour, it’s much more common to have two or three cohesive colours which work together to form the colour palette for the island. For example, on my kidcore candyland island, it was mostly pink, but I also had blue and yellow on there too. My current island, Utopia, an industrial evil factory island, is mostly black, grey, white and silver. Knowing what your colour scheme is will really help you out later, it doesn’t mean that you need to make a note of a particular shade, but if you know roughly what your colour group is, it will make it far easier to pick things like custom codes and items later.
Which builds do you want on your island?
So, now we have the theme and we have a colour scheme, you then want to start thinking about the builds you want on your island. To be clear, you don’t need to know every single build to begin with but having a rough list of what you want to make can be the difference in actually finishing an island.
At this point, you may know what builds are standing out to you or you may have found some inspiration whilst you were looking at things to formulate what your theme is. If you haven’t already done so, what I would recommend is looking back over your mood board, and making a list of a few builds you want to make. Even just having a rough idea of the first two or three builds can really help. It doesn’t have to be big builds either. Having an idea of what you want your entrance to look like is a great starting point for decorating.
On your moodboard, list a couple of ideas you have and if you still don’t have inspiration which gives you an idea of what you are trying to make and you need it, it’s always worth taking a moment to go back into social media or google and searching for those builds which may help give you some direction in what you want to make.
If it also helps you out for later as well, I would also make a note of any items you are going to need to make these builds come to life. If you are a new island decorator, don’t worry about knowing the names of some of these items, just having a list of the rough items you are looking for is good for now. If you are looking to make a fake building, chances are you are going to need simple panels. If you are making some winding walkways and want some lighting for the path, maybe you want some ground lights or street lights. At least for the first few builds, it’s worth knowing what items you need because if you are planning on visiting a treasure island to get items, it’s always worth knowing what you are going to need before you go so that you can find everything you want to get stuck into decorating later.
What custom codes do you want?
Now that you know the theme, the colour scheme and the builds you are looking for, it’s then time to look at the custom codes you may need for your island. Finding the best custom codes can be difficult to do, but the thing to keep in mind with custom codes is what you need to make a build work and what your colour scheme is, with those two pieces of information you can find basically any custom codes you want. I am going to be writing a separate blog post on how I find the best codes, but I do have a video on YouTube where you can see how you can find the right codes for your island.
Which villagers should you pick?
Something else which you may want to consider during the island planning process is which villagers you want. Although it may not be the most immediate thought which comes to mind, a lot of getting the vibes of the island in place is in picking the villagers for an island and when creators visit dream addresses, you will notice the first thing they often do is open the map and you will see which villagers an island designer has on the island.
Do villagers really matter for decorating? Not particularly, but they can help keep the cohesion of your island going throughout. There are 413 villagers in the game and you can only have up to 10 on your island, so how do you pick the right villagers?
There’s different ways of doing this but what I like to do is pull up a list of every villager which is available in New Horizons. When you have that list up, try to think about what is the most important thing you want your villagers to do. If you’re decorating in a specific colour, then you may only want to look at villagers which are in that colour, but if you are planning on telling a story and you want your villagers to have a specific job on the island, then you may want to pick villagers based on that instead.
What I personally like to do though is have a short list of villagers which could work on the island. If there are absolute no brainer villagers you want for your island and you are going to have them no matter what, have these as guaranteed villagers for your island. Outside of that, try to pick a few villagers which you don’t mind who you would consider should you not find every villager you want. Villager hunting is a nightmare and trying to find the right villager can be time consuming so if you want to make it slightly easier on yourself, having a longer list of possible options can make it easier to finish your island later.
Summary
The biggest thing that has really made the difference in planning my ACNH islands is having a mood board to keep me on track and when you really boil it down, knowing your theme, colour scheme, builds, custom codes and villagers gives you a lot more peace of mind when you do finally go into decorating an island. Now that you have the plan in place, it’s time to go looking for the perfect map in Animal Crossing: New Horizons so that you can make your plans come to life and take you one step closer to making that final dream address.
What are some of the things you put on your mood board? Is there a villager which you absolutely have to have on every island or do you mix up what you do in planning your island with each one you make? Let me know in the comments below, and I’ll see you in the next one.
