Animal Crossing: New Horizons map design
At the beginning of the first major lockdown in April of 2020, I was stuck inside wondering what I could possibly do to occupy my time (and make some money as a broke college student). I tried to find good side hustle jobs online, but wasn’t very successful (there are a lot of scams out there). So, I started to think about what services I could potentially offer to people who don’t have the same skillset I do. I found the website Fiverr and did some browsing to get ideas. I made a profile and posted a few different “gigs” that people could buy from me. These included editing in Photoshop, designing a logo, and designing island maps for people who play Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Obviously that’s the name of this page, so I think you can guess which one of these was the most successful!
This early stage of lockdown also happened to be when this new Animal Crossing game launched, and I was very into it! You can read about the game here if you’re unfamiliar with it. One of the major aspects of the game is being able to terraform and decorate your island. I had a friend who played the game as well ask me for input on their island design. I knew of a website called Happy Island Designer, which allowed users to plan out their island design ahead of time. I used this site to create a design for them, and they loved it! This is what gave me the idea to post this as a gig on Fiverr.
After I posted the gigs on Fiverr, I wasn’t expecting much. However, within a few days I had someone purchase my island design gig, and I was super excited! I designed their map, got good feedback, and continued to get more orders! I was super proud of myself because I felt like I had come up with a really original idea that nobody else was doing yet, which is the key to success in this scenario. It was also exciting for me to be able to use my general knowledge of design principles and apply it to a new type of medium!
In the end, I completed over 350 designs on Fiverr with almost all 5 star reviews. I never expected my little side hustle to go so far, but it’s something I’m extremely proud of now! You can view what my work looks like below and some of the stats associated.
nook village
In December of 2020, I was contacted through Fiverr by an outside company, Nook Village. This company has a website solely devoted to selling Animal Crossing items for players to use in-game. They had seen the success of my gig on Fiverr though and were interested in offering a similar service on their website!
I was interested in expanding where I was selling my service, so I organized some calls with this company and talked through details. I decided to go through with offering my services on their website, and together we were able to work out all of the details! We got the gig posted on their website and the orders started coming in!
I offered my service on their site in addition to Fiverr and had an additional 150+ orders come from there! Their clientele is 100% Animal Crossing fans, so it worked out perfectly! It was great to be able to expand to a greater and more specific audience. My design work for this company is the same I showed above!
yes ideas/essence Animal Crossing island
In June of 2021, I was contacted again on Fiverr by an outside company. This time it was YeS IDEAS, a marketing agency based in Germany. They reached out to me because they were working on a new marketing launch for essence, a makeup company also based in Germany, but present in the U.S. as well. Essence wanted an island made for them on Animal Crossing: New Horizons since some brands had been using islands as a marketing technique. Nobody at YeS IDEAS was familiar with the game though, so that’s when they reached out to me.
I had some calls with YeS IDEAS to go over the details of the project, and it was bigger than anything I had done in the past with my map designs. Not only did they want me to design a map, they wanted me to build the island for them since nobody was familiar enough at YeS to do it themselves. This would involve me actually having the Nintendo Switch since there is no way to play on the island without having the console. I wrote a proposal plan for them which included all of the details and potential costs for the project. After they reviewed the proposal and cleared the costs with essence, we decided to move forward! I went ahead and ordered the Nintendo Switch on their behalf and got to work!
The first step was making a rough design of what the island would look like! YeS had given me some materials to review about the essence and ideas they had for things to include on the island. After I reviewed all of this and got some ideas for the design, I began working on it! Since this design was just for me to reference, it was pretty simple compared to the designs I presented to my normal customers. I had a few calls with YeS to present the design and explain my thoughts. They liked what I had come up with and so I began the next phase!
The second step of the project was pretty simple from my end. To be able to actually edit the island, you have to get the island to a 3 star rating. Getting to 3 stars involves acquiring more villagers to live on your island, upgrading and unlocking shops, and completing other tasks to better the island! This takes about 15-20 hours of game play for an experienced player like me. Once I got to this stage in the game, I could begin the longest phase of the project, building the actual island!!
I spent about 120 hours building, decorating, and going through revisions of the island. It was a long and tedious process, but also extremely rewarding to see it all come together! I first had to flatten the existing island, then build up the new one I designed, and then decorate it. Once it was at a mostly finished state, I showed it off to the team I was working with at YeS and we went through a few review/revision cycles. At one point, we were having daily calls to discuss the progress I was making and see what else needed to be added, removed, or changed. It was really nice getting to work with members at YeS so closely and they provided me with constructive feedback and had so many great ideas for the island! Finally, essence was able to launch the completed island in December!!
This entire project was so amazing to work on! I spent around 160 hours on it in total while also doing a summer program and class, and then being a full-time student once classes began in August. I feel extremely lucky to have worked on such a large project and felt that my work was truly valued! The success I gathered on Fiverr allowed me to be recognized by two companies and I am so grateful for it! Check out some of the final pictures of the island below!
