Lakes International Comic Art Festival team member Maheen Murtaza is running a challenge to design a comics-inspired outfit in the social simulation video game series Animal Crossing using the Custom Designs app.

Simply submit your design - .jpgs only please! - via maheen@comicartfestival.com by Friday 2nd October 2020, in order to have a chance at becoming shortlisted among five other contestants - and take part in an ingame, LICAF customed obstacle course to win a spectacular prize!

The six who make it to the shortlist - judged by a panel that includes comic artist and writer and Animal Crossing addict Emma Vieceli - will also receive a free Nintendo online subscription for a year.

Developed and published by Nintendo and created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami, Animal Crossing is set in an animal populated town where you live your everyday life in real-time. As part of the thriving village community you can make friends with residents, fish in the sea and decorate your homes. Using the internal clock of the Nintendo GameCube, all events in the game happen at the same time as the real world. So as dawn breaks across Europe, the sun also begins to shine in Animal Crossing and when the stars come out, it's bedtime for all your virtual friends!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Switch allows players to create custom clothes and share them with others online. There are multiple ways to share the pieces you create, and there’s many ways to make custom gear for folks.

• Submit your design - .jpgs only please! - via maheenATcomicartfestival.com (repalce AT with @) by 12 noon on Friday 2nd October 2020, in order to have a chance at becoming shortlisted among five other contestants

• Check out Nintentdo's Animal Crossing - New Horizons at www.animal-crossing.com/new-horizons

• There's some guides to creating costimes in Animal Crossing here on the Polygon web site

• The Nook's Island Animal Crossing Community Site has some example costume designs here