Most of my inspiration has come from watching countless of YouTube vids of other people's islands and grabbing bits and pieces of my favorite areas and applying it to my own island with some of my own ideas thrown in (though not many). Or I look up pictures of rpg villages or real world areas for inspiration.
It's been a long process, and I'm not even half way through. I wonder how others manage to decorate their own towns so beautifully. What about you? Are you still working on your island, got bored already? And did you look elsewhere for inspiration or kind of just went with your own tastes and feelings?
A lot of my inspiration came from other video games/anime and one area is a mixture between something from history (Hanging Gardens or something Egyptian), an ark from Last Cloudia (Kaldina) , though initially I wanted the area to be some sort of outpost from Dragon Age Inquisition).
It'd be a mixture of real world references, my imagination and retro games for pixel art references.
But the whole downtown center of my island was referenced off of San Francisco's city hall area. I wanted a strong grid look and then mixed my own design for the neighborhoods.
Designing environments is very natural for me but it's a slow process. I'm always going back to the drawing board to work out problems for specific layouts.
Most of my decorating stems from my imagination and attractions I'd love to have super easy access to in real life. Some of it comes from real world references, such as Ankha's desert oasis yard, as well as the outdoor classroom and art auction areas next to my museum.
I work in small bursts/iterations depending on if I'm up for decorating at the time, so I can figure out what furniture I need to order to finish up a specific section.
A few areas of my island are influenced by real world - my family property! My parents bought land when I was little we have a little cabin / camping areas there. So the area around my player house and the campsite are themed around that.
The "town" area of my island (where my museum, shops, and residents services are) is mostly influenced around what I wish my New Leaf town could have been. I really wanted red brick paths in New Leaf but they looked ugly next to the gray stones by the buildings so I ended up with stone paths instead. So I would say that's mostly my own ideas.
My beaches are totally 1000% influenced by other people because I am so AWFUL at beach decorations.
The first thing I decided on was the neighbourhoods. Where they will be, how many houses in a neighbourhood, what the main feature is around each neighbourhood. After that, the pathing. I wanted a path that led to all the neighbourhoods. The neighbourhoods + the pathing make up the "skeleton" of the island.
Once the skeleton was done, I concentrated on putting the "skin" on. The skin being the aesthetic. Where the trees and flowers go, where the little corners for picnics or book lovers are, where to put the things that I want to look at while I'm walking around my island every day. 🏝
Mainly real world references and my villager house exteriors, since I've only changed 2 villagers since launch. My urban beach town area takes inspiration from real life for the markets/stalls/sign posts. My very first 3 villagers Scoot, Ursala, and Jambette all have similar houses, so I lumped them together and worked off that. I always try to make areas that would suit my villagers houses. So any new villagers that come in, I'd greatly consider their exterior when planning.
a mixture of my own ideas + real life inspiration; any areas on my island came from my own ideas but in terms of where to put trees, bushes, flowers, etc, i looked to real life landscapes for inspiration
I like decorating with my own ideas, however I do use a lot of other people's patterns. It's very orderly. Never a flower out of place.
It's simple, cute, colorful, and I like to add a few funny areas like, muddy footprints coming out of a manhole cover that leads to the toilet. A duck hunt dog sign next to the duck pond, a graveyard retro diner with cockroaches and flies to eat, and my newest addition is Booker and Copper in jail.
I also love using the custom signs. There are so many of them in my town. It was the same with New Leaf. I also rarely decorate using anything modern. The only t.v. I have is the apple, because it's so cute.
I try to be original. If I see something someone else did and like it, I derive inspiration from it but put my own spin on things. It keeps things feeling original.
My island has little spots of interest based on themes or ideas that I like, and none of them necessarily go together. I at least tried to tie the overall layout of the island together though, so I at least place those areas in the places they would most logically make sense. Still, I don't NOT build something because it won't go with the rest of the island's aesthetic because it really doesn't have one. We have a space station next to Nook's and a pet sanctuary next to the orchard.
The general layout in terms of buildings, river and cliff locations I decided on my own early on. Then I had some small blank spots left that I filled by doing a lot of googling for inspiration.
I'd say I'm about ~65% done with decorating, even though I've already hit 5 star status lol. I've gotten some inspiration from other people's islands (mostly from twitter screenshots or visiting dream addresses) but I feel like I've made everything my own if that makes sense. I've been having a ton of fun with my island and I'm very pleased with how it's turning out!
Lots and lots of experimentation. I have stayed away from 5 island tour videos so that I could really feel like I was developing my own ideas. As silly as it sounds my favourite part of my island is the olympic swimming pool stadium I created for my jocks. It has lanes, rows of seating, an umpires seat, change rooms for the athletes, vending machines and big lights for night time. I don't have a set "way" or process for island decorating... I just... do stuff I guess. The tbt fair gave my the opportunity to develop a couple of areas that were rushed but ok, I have since developed them into really nice areas including a three tier cafe.
i've used inspiration from things i've seen from screenshots but primarily i've just done my own thing. i haven't even thought to use real world places as inspiration so i think i may actually use that too!
