Originally written and published for StropsE.com, written December 20th, 2020
It’s a new season for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and that means the joys and sorrows of trying to make a perfect Snowboy. With only one chance each day to craft the snow person, it can be frustrating to repeatedly get only almost perfect, when it’s only the perfect ones that score the DIY recipes and large snowflakes. So here’s some tips and tricks I’ve personally tested to help perfect your Snowboy game.
If this is your first winter in Animal Crossing, you’ll notice Isabelle announcing with the change of the seasons the start of the snow and advising players to make snow people on the island. The way this works is that each day, 2 little snowballs will spawn naturally on your island, often near each other. You may want to preemptively clear some areas for these snowballs to spawn, as they need a bit of open space around them in order to be rolled around in the snow. Don’t worry if you accidentally roll one of these initial snowballs into a wall or break them, as a short while later, they should respawn for another chance at making a Snowboy, though they will break if they are kicked into an item or furniture. Clearing space helps with that as well. From there, it’s just a matter of choosing how large you want your snow person and rolling one snowball onto the other when you’re ready! Easy-peasy, right?
Well, not quite… If you want to unlock all the snowflake-based winter DIYs, you’ll need to get the ratio of head and body to what AC:NH considers perfect. There’s a couple different methods of going about this, so let’s see what our options are.
(from reddit u/Skrufalz)
To start, you need the snowballs at least big enough that you’re rolling them, not just kicking them around. This usually takes about 13 kicks to achieve, as long as you don’t kick it across paths or other non-snow ground cover. From there, you have some options. First, the time method, where you count how long you need to roll each snowball. General consensus seems to say that rolling the larger, bottom snowball for about 17 seconds, and then rolling the smaller, top snowball for about 12 seconds results in a perfect Snowboy most of the time. It can get a bit tricky, as you need to remember to include the time when you’re rolling the snowballs near each other, but it’s very consistent otherwise.
Another handy method is to utilize the path tools to make your perfect Snowboy, as snowballs actually become smaller when rolled over paths. This can be handy if you accidentally made one larger than you meant to or you’re trying to reset after a wayward dung beetle started rolling the snowballs himself. If you have a large-enough space on your island to devote to it, one method is to create a straight path 10 squares wide, and then roll a maximum sized snowball to each end of the path. Snowballs seem to cap out at a size around your characters ears, and you will visibly slow down when pushing a snowball of that size, so that’s how you can tell if it’s big enough. From there, push one of your max size snowballs down the path towards the other, and it should shrink to the correct size as you roll it over your 10 wide path. This gets you really big Snowboys, but needs a good amount of set up.
The final popular method is to compare the height of your snowballs against our handy dandy in-game ruler, your villager. Known as the ‘Ear Height Method,’ it involves rolling one snowball to its maximum size (slightly above your character’s ear/eye line) before rolling your second snowball to a size just under your character’s ears. This should be the correct ratio for a perfect Snowboy, and you can feel free to modify it larger or smaller using paths and snow to correct any mistakes. It takes some practice to figure out the right proportions and perspective, but it’s doable and requires little-to-no prior set-up.
(thanks to u/sableye-girl for these masterpieces)
And there you have it! As a final note, the most important thing about making Snowboys is finding the correct ratio. I personally had better luck eyeballing the ratio and making very short Snowboys such as this one rather than using the Ear Height Method, but it really depends on your preferences. And once you have all the recipes and large snowflakes you need, feel free to make some really weird Snowboys, as they have different dialogue depending on how you make them.
Stay warm, and have fun building!