Saturday, September 12, 2020

Special Requests from my Youngest Son

 A few days ago I sketched a fossil called a Trilobite from the game Animal Crossing New Horizons.  I shared with two of my three sons..........with my youngest who also plays the game.

Last night my youngest texts me saying he had a challenge for me.....sketching my house in the game.  When you start out, you reside in a tent until you go so far in the game and then have a one room house built.  As you work for and earn money, you add on rooms...one room at a time.  A complete house will have four rooms on the main level, a large upstairs, and a basement.  Later in the game, you can customize the outside of the house having several styles to choose from.

Accepting his challenge, I decided to sketch both the tent I started out in and how my house looks now with 1,825 hours of game play.  One might think I like this game......ha ha.  Truth be known, I now have two accounts and playing two games at the same time....one in the Southern Hemisphere and my original in the Northern Hemisphere.  This way I can play different seasons catching season specific critters I would otherwise have to wait forever to get to finish my museum.  My second game only has 395 hours of game play but I haven't had it as long as the original one I started.


Today, my son gives me yet another challenge...sketching my character in the original game, which I agreed I would do.

My son said he was going to share with co-workers who also play the game and when I asked him today if he had had a chance to share this with them, he said "they loved it...along with 7000 other people."  My response was "WHAT?  What do you mean along with 7000 other people?"  

I have learned he and my middle son are sharing my artwork on Reddit.  Reddit is broken down in subcategories and one is Animal Crossing.  My son posted it and within six hours had over 7000 upvotes (whatever that means) along with many comments.  A couple hours later it was over 10,000 upvotes.  One comment was a viewer asking if I'd sketch my character in the game and why my youngest son gave me this next challenge.

So this is what I worked on today.  In the game (depending on months in the year) you either are confronted with a scorpion or a tarantula during evening hours.  Most often they nab me but I've managed to catch enough scorpions to have a model made in the game, which I have set outside the house.  I set myself up with the model to sketch this little scene.




Both are worked in the Stillman and Birn Alpha journal using Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils 2B and 4B.  I'm having a blast working in graphite!!!!


2 comments:

Ginny Stiles said...

What is the name of this strange game?

Susan Bronsak said...

Animal Crossing New Horizons. It's a Switch game that came out in March of this year about the time the pandemic hit. It's one of the top games people of ALL ages have been playing.

You as the main character go to an island with a couple other villagers and you work at making it inviting for new residents to move in (up to 10 total). You chop wood, get resources from rocks, fish, shoot down balloons carrying gift items, dig up and collect fossils, plant and grow flowers, shrubs, and trees, dive for sea creatures, catch bugs, pull weeds, collect shells along the beach, and harvest fruit to earn money (bells) to make purchases and to upgrade structures and decorate the island. You create furniture and other items by crafting the resources you work at collecting by following collected recipe cards.

There's a really nice museum you donate caught species and fossils found. When I'm in the museum, I think about our sketching group and what an awesome place it would be to sit and sketch :-)

You get to visit other islands....some mystery islands and also islands your family/friends create in their own games. This is where the family and friends can meet up together through game play.

The game is in real time and follows the seasons depending on the hemisphere you choose to play in. Northern would be what we are used to here in the US.

This has been a really nice escape from the reality of what's going on around us. I also find it to be an educational game with fossils you also collect and critters caught.....various type fish, sea creatures, and bugs.

It sure beats watching TV!!!