Here’s one way to bring a bit of culture to your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island.
The Getty Museum has released an online tool that lets you turn classic works of art by the likes of Rembrandt and Van Gogh into QR codes you can upload into your game.
The new Art Generator allows you to search through any of the Getty’s open-access images to find the right image for your house — including Van Gogh’s Irises and Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Blue Pot — and crop it to your liking.
Once you’ve selected an image, the generator will pixelate the art down to fit in Animal Crossing‘s custom design space and spit out a QR code you can download using the NookLink app.
The Art Generator isn’t limited to just Getty’s collection either thanks to an option that lets you plug in IIIF data — an image framework used by many art institutions to organize their archives. Open-access works provided by other museums can be transformed and uploaded into the game using the same tool.
Getty warned that you should check with a museum or gallery’s terms of use before using their data and uploading it.
David Newbury, a software architect at the arts organization, told Digital Trends the generator was the brainchild of Getty software engineer — and Animal Crossing fan — Selina Chang-Yi Zawacki.
“It was one of those ideas that was good enough that we dropped everything and put together a team to make it happen,” Newbury said.
A five-person crew used the open-source Animal Crossing Pattern Tool to build the feature, which Newbury hopes will “bring a little joy” to people stuck at home.
“What we want to do with our art is let people get to it from where they are, not necessarily from where we are,” he told Digital Trends.
If you’re looking for more Animal Crossing: New Horizons things to do, follow along with a tour of the in-game museum with the help of a real aquarium or check out our guides to catch the latest fish or make bells fast.
