How hard is it to make a custom code flag in Animal Crossing?
I’ve been playing Animal Crossing New Horizons since the game launched in March 2020, but there’s one part of it I’ve never really touched - the custom code tool. I’m absolutely terrified of it to the point that I avoided it completely until I had no choice but to make a code to complete the two Nook Miles Achievements which are associated with making custom designs in ACNH.
When I eventually learnt that you can look up custom codes, I realised that it was pretty straightforward to find a design you liked and download it from the Custom Designs Portal to use to decorate your island. This was a much easier way of me designing islands which didn’t involve the stress of trying to make codes when I have no art skills. In fact, I would say that I’ve become fairly knowledgeable in how to find the best custom codes to help you design islands.
I’ve never had any issues with finding the perfect flag to represent my island. However, when it came to my cottagecore island, I couldn’t find the custom code that I wanted which was a simple sycamore leaf design. It would be the perfect way to finish off my island, but whenever I searched for a flag to match my island’s namesake, it just didn’t exist. That left me with one option, try and make my flag myself.
How did it start?
Back when the hard mode challenge created by Nintentalk was the trend in ACNH, one of the requirements was that you had to design your own flag. And, as someone who wasn’t going to be able to do this due to the lack of art skills, I decided I needed some more help. So, I turned to another tool which I had heard of but never really tried before.
There’s a pixel generator called AC Pattern Tool which allows you to design a custom code in a browser without having to worry about trying to make it in the game. More crucially for me, it has a feature which allows you to upload an image and the tool will convert this into a custom code for you to use.
Sycamore leaf design from custom code generator AC Patterns
Using AC Patterns, I uploaded an image I took from google of a sycamore leaf and….well….let’s say the flag was fine. I could deal with it, but it wasn’t the best and I knew at some point I would need to relook at it. And that thought terrified me.
What happened with the custom code flag?
So, with only one option, and the rest of my cottagecore island done, I had no choice but to relook at the flag and deal with the generated image and try and make it better.
I was happy with the overall shape of the leaf, it looked right. But the colours were another thing to be desired. So, my focus was mainly on trying to get the right colours and create a flag which had a realistic look to it. The only problem was that I had no idea how to use the custom code design tools in Animal Crossing.
After asking a friend for help to work out the colours, I knew the only way to fix the flag was to go one step at a time and fix it in small increments.
How to make custom codes in ACNH
Hue, vividness and brightness sliders within the custom code tool in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
There are three sliders which you use to select your colours when you make custom codes in Animal Crossing New Horizons - Hue, Vividness and Brightness and you need to know how each of these work before you can start selecting the right colours for your design.
Hue is the slider which determines the colour vein your final colour will be in. If you have seen colour wheels before and how the shades blend through a spectrum, that’s effectively what hue is in ACNH. All you need to do is select the rough colour section you want your colour to be in. For my flag, I was mostly working with greens, so I stuck within the green hues that are in the slider.
The Vividness slider then controls the saturation levels of the colour you have created with deeper and richer shades being found on the right of the slider, and lighter shades being found on the left.
Brightness then controls how light or dark your final colour is.
You need to move all three of these sliders around to make the colour you want and the amount you move them will vary depending on what sort of colour you are trying to make. It is worth saying that vividness and brightness are going to be the sliders you move around the most. Depending on what colour you need, what you will normally find is that when you move your brightness up a notch or two, you will need to turn down your vividness a notch or two and likewise if you are turning your brightness down, your vividness will go up to ensure that you keep your colours visible throughout your design.
When you have all of the colours you then want, you can then place each pixel dot one at a time, and you will see your design come to life on the grid in front of you, and on the canvas you have on the left of the design. How it looks on the canvas is how it will appear in game, and this really helped me out when it came to designing the flag.
How did designing the flag go?
Picking colours was the hardest thing with designing the flag! Once I understood how each of the sliders worked, I found it much easier to pick the right colours and gradually I was finding that I was getting better at spotting when a green was either too blue or too yellow for my design.
I did have frequent moments where I was pausing between setting up my colours and designing the flag because I didn’t have quite the right shade of green to make the 3D effect I wanted on the flag. As a result, I ended up very often drawing a section, realising it wasn’t going to work because I didn’t have the right colour before then going back and reworking the colours again. This wasn’t the end of the world, but it meant that I was using a lot of concentration to keep designing the flag.
One of the hardest things I found early on was trying to work out how to make the veins that appear in a sycamore leaf. I had pulled up an image of a sycamore leaf so I could use it for colour and shape reference and knew that I wanted to make something which had the same look to it, but as I was placing each of the colours in the first part of the leaf, I could see that I was going to struggle with making my custom code flag look realistic without having some more defined sections. As a result, I played around with the colours to get a completely different colour for the veins so I could see each section, and that made it easier for me to then work on adding the right colours into each part.
Custom code tips & tricks
The other thing that was really helpful was being reminded of a lesson I had from school which was to draw an arrow in the corner of your work so that you could see where the light source was. The idea for my custom code being that the closer you are to the light source, or arrow, the lighter the shade is that you need to use. So, I took a couple of colours that I wasn’t using as part of the design and I drew an arrow to help guide me. This actually turned out more useful later in the design as I continued to work on each section of the leaf.
Custom code design of leaf in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Magenta arrow in top left indicates light source location
Something else which I found helpful for me was to reset each part of the leaf so that I could rework all of the colours that were on the original design. The way I did this was to use one obviously different colour from everything else I was using and then replace this with each colour I needed one pixel at a time. I started with a bright green colour, but over time I realised I needed more greens so I swapped to something which I wasn’t going to get confused at all. A lovely, bright magenta!
Having a bright pink available was so helpful because I was no longer getting confused on which colours needed to be replaced and which ones I was keeping. Everything that was a bright pink could go and be replaced with a pixel dot green instead. The next time you try getting into custom code design in Animal Crossing, I highly suggest doing this! Just keeping a couple of extra colours out of the way, where I wasn’t going to end up pulling them into the design I was working on really helped me out, and if you need something to help you see how to bring a code together, doing this one thing saved me so many headaches!
The last thing I recommend with custom codes is one which I didn’t actually notice I was doing until I finally finished my flag. Don’t look at the grid to see how your code is coming together. Look at the canvas on the left instead. This is how your code will appear in game, not how you see it on the grid in front of you.
Every pixel you place matters and you won’t know how it looks until you watch the canvas and how each pixel affects your design. In some cases, colours will snap together in angles you never expected, and in others the way you place shades of your chosen colour can make patterns which you don’t want in your final design. Seeing these on the canvas makes it easier to then go back onto the grid and manipulate the pixels so that you create the design you want.
Is making your own custom codes in ACNH worth it?
So, given the process of making a custom code in Animal Crossing is pretty long and tedious, do I think it’s worth the time and effort to do it? Absolutely! If you want to add a personal touch to your island, there’s honestly nothing more fulfilling than having your own custom codes somewhere on your island. Whether that’s creating your own version of the path in Animal Crossing or creating a unique and personal flag which matches the vibes of your island, it’s worth giving it a go once you know how to manipulate the sliders in the custom code tool to get the look you want.
Am I going to make my own custom codes more regularly? I don’t think so. With the amount of time and mental energy I put into making one custom code flag, I think I will spend the majority of time looking for custom designs instead which I can use to decorate my island, but I will definitely try making at least one or two codes per island to get the look that I want.
The custom design tools seem really overwhelming at first, but this process has shown me that they are actually not as bad as I thought they were. Once you understand the basics of them, they are a lot simpler to use to get the look you want.
If you want to see the full story of how designing my cottagecore flag went, I have a full video of designing my cottagecore flag which summarises the whole stream for you, and I’ll see you in the next one.
