An Animal Crossing: New Horizons fan has made cute ceramic mugs in the image of the game’s colorful villager critters. As one of Nintendo’s hit franchises, Animal Crossing is loved for its laid-back nature that deals with managing things from a house to an entire island at a self-imposed pace as fans live with animal townspeople. The designs of these villager characters tend to stick with fans, who find their favorites easily.
In Animal Crossing for the GameCube, these villagers were rather simplistic in design as pixilated textures would be mapped to a 3D model that would represent all of that specific animal in question. For example, cats such as Kiki and Tom used the same model but were differentiated by personality, sound font voice pitch, and the colorful texture patterns over the 3D model they shared. This has been a trend with most Animal Crossing villagers to this day with some adjustments being included for the sake of what suits the character best.
Due to the fact that the Animal Crossing characters still share similar shapes, Reddit user happyclaypot has found that they lend well to mugs. As a result, they’ve spent their time crafting six ceramic creations featuring Marshal, Octavian, Zucker, Coco, and the event NPC Wisp the ghost. Each one looks incredibly well-made down from the curve of the mugs (and the smaller Coco tea light holder) to the paintwork that brings their expressions to life.
What’s even more impressive about the mugs is that they also match the unique shape of the animal in question. Instead of painting some details on, they’re sculpted instead, which gives the creations even more depth and life. Zucker even has grooves for his takoyaki sauce on the top complete with his toothpick. It’s definitely a memorable fan creation, much like the 3D printed Crescent Moon Chair.
In the comments of happyclaypot’s post, other fans are in awe of the mugs. One has said that they must have taken ages, to which the sculptor responded that the first firing that turns the clay into ceramic takes over twelve hours. It isn’t said if these mugs were fired together or individually, with the latter meaning that these most likely took days.
Other comments ask about buying one of these ceramic creations to have as their own. While happyclaypot seems to be rather humble about it, the artist does run an Esty store under the name “happyclaypotStudio.” If fans are interested in taking one of these mugs home, they should definitely check their store for more Animal Crossing-themed creations, like the new gyroids in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now for Nintendo Switch.