The (Pixel) Art of Animal Crossing Flags

May 23, 2021

In 2020, the virus overtook our streets and Animal Crossing overtook our hearts. I contributed to our gaming epidemic by designing island flags for strangers around the world.

I’ve been creating pixel art since I was a kid, but my artwork never really went out into the world. So I enjoyed creating free personal patches of art for everyone.

It all started when I created a flag for myself. I made an account on Reddit just to post an image of it. It blew up. My DMs were flooded with requests and I never said no.

Lily of The Valley
My personal island flag of a Lily of The Valley.

I eventually stopped (which was possible because I never charged for these). Yet, I still get requests now and then.

There were 4 big challenges in making these flags:

  • Each flag had to be personal. So it not only had to have a unique meaningful design for the client, but it also had to be different from other flags I made.
  • The game limits how many colors you can use.
  • The artwork has to fit in a 32x32 pixel grid.
  • The game tries to smooth out the pixel art to remove hard corners. This creates unintentional results, which sometimes forced me to rethink the designs.

Anyways, here’s a collection of most of my art. Yipeeeee!!!

Ball in the sky
A sapphire marble gleaming in the night.
Flower
I loved drawing the foam in the water.
Birds flying
It's the bird from the Nintendo DS apps!
Parakeets
The client wanted to show off her cute pets.
A cat butte
It's a cat butte. Look up butte.
Pearl in a clam
It took forever to get that clam shape right.
Clover crest
This crest was related to the client's late grandparents.
Earth
I loved using those neon colors.
Fern
For a person named Fern.
Flowers
Posing the flower took forever.
A flag on an island
She loved it!
A lighthouse on the coast
Very european.
A lilikoi fruit
It's a lilikoi fruit! Took forever to get the seeds right.
A moon on the horizon
A beautiful flag for my beautiful girlfriend!
Nebula
A nebula. Kinda looks like intestines.
Piplup.
The client's sibling loved piplup!
It's piplup again!
Yay!!!
A plant
Tried a new frame style here.
A field of golden roses
I was surprised at how dense this ended up.
Saturn
A still Saturn.
Shrek's outhouse
Shrek fans are inevitable.
Vines in the shape of a S
Inspired by the classic Gameboy screen.

You're welcome to use any of these flags for your island! I haven't touched Animal Crossing in a long time, so I hope these codes still work:

MA-2550-1514-0719

DA-0916-3665-5805

If you don't have Nintendo Online, you can recreate these flags because I posted screenshots of the editor itself!

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© Seraph Kumar 2023