I like to think that this would have happened with or without quarantine, but whatever the reason: it’s great. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has exceeded the cult status of its franchise history and become a genuine megahit, cementing itself as perhaps the definitive video game phenomenon of the coronavirus crisis. It’s spawned all sorts of real-world interactions, but this has to be my favorite. The Getty Museum has released a tool that will let you import its paintings into Animal Crossing through QR codes, and a whole lot of people are about to put a gallery room in their house.
The tool is live right now at the Getty website. Essentially, it takes a painting from the museum collection and shrinks it down to the size of a custom design in Animal Crossing, and then provides you with a QR Code to bring it into the game. There are a few paintings already up on the website, ready to go, but you can also go deeper and find your own.
The number in the headline is the number of artworks listed in Getty’s open access portal. But there are also tools for using artworks from other museums, if you don’t want to be limited by what the Getty has on offer.
If you need a refresher on how to use QR Codes in the game, here you go:
- 1) Get the Nintendo Switch Online app for your phone, and then sign in with the same account you use for the game.
- 2) Go into the settings in Animal Crossing and activate Nook Link.
- 3) Restart the Switch Online app, and Nook Link should now be active.
- 4) Open the ‘Designs’ app on your Nook Link.
- 5) Get some codes and scan them.
- 6) Go back into the game and open your Nook Phone. Select the custom designs app and get downloading the designs form the codes you scanned.
Within minutes you could be wearing impressionist classics as shirts, hanging them up on your walls, or scattering them all over the ground for a custom path. You could even replace your flag with a famous piece of art: mine is a preset and I should really get around to getting a new one. It’s a great idea, and a fun thing for the museum to be doing during this time.
