Tomodachi Life Living the Dream Face Paint Guide & Hidden Secrets

The Ultimate Tomodachi Life Living the Dream Face Paint Guide and Secrets

The biggest and most exciting upgrade in the entire game is the new Face Paint editor. In older games, players had to use boring preset makeup layers. Now, players can draw freely directly onto a character’s face, making it possible to create scars, freckles, animal snouts, and even famous cartoon characters. Because the Switch does not have a stylus like the old 3DS, drawing with a finger or a controller can take some patience.

To make drawing easier, the game includes several advanced tools. Players can turn on a fine grid to keep their drawings perfectly straight. When drawing something that needs to be perfectly mirrored, like cat ears or symmetrical makeup, players can duplicate the editing space, move it pixel by pixel, and flip it horizontally using the ZL button. Another amazing trick is the alpha lock feature, which lets players paint inside a shape without accidentally coloring outside the lines. Players can even save their current drawing as a temporary stamp to reuse on the same face, though these stamps disappear once the editor is closed.

However, players should be aware of a few funny visual bugs. When using dark colors, like dark brown for hair shading, the preview image might look bright green, yellow, or red. This is just a harmless glitch in the menu; once the character is saved, the colors look perfectly normal on the island. Another thing to keep in mind is that face paint does not move when a character changes emotions. If a player draws realistic eyes over a character’s closed eyelids, it might look a little cursed and creepy when the character smiles or blinks.

To show just how powerful this tool is, the community has shared exact instructions for creating highly detailed characters. The table below details the exact steps to recreate the famous viral “Hugh Morris” character using the face paint tools.

Creation Step	Exact In-Game Settings and Coordinates
Base Features	Use the face shape located on the top row, second from the right. Select the palest skin color option. Choose bangs from row 8, second column from the right.
Color Palette	Select the purple main hair color that is 4 spaces up from the bottom. Make the sub hair color the brightest red in the rightmost column.
Facial Adjustments	Choose elf ears and move them 1 space up. Make the nose 1 size smaller. Move the mouth 2 spaces up from the default position. Add sparkly eye decorations and stretch the eyes by 1 unit.
Face Paint 1: Purple Triangles	Draw a purple triangle 6 sizes smaller than normal. Place the left triangle exactly 3 pixels to the left of the eye sparkle. Copy and flip it, placing the right triangle 3 pixels to the right of the right eye sparkle.
Face Paint 2: Red Triangles	Select a pale red color. Rotate a triangle 90 degrees, make it 2 sizes smaller, and center it perfectly on the eye sparkle so it touches the bottom of the eye.
Face Paint 3: Yellow Circles	Make a yellow circle 13 sizes smaller than normal. Center it directly below the red triangle, then carefully hand-draw a 1-pixel thick white outline around it.

Next-Level Character Creation and Pronouns

Before players even touch the face paint, they have to set up the basic identity of their islanders. Living the Dream is famous for being the most expressive and inclusive game in the series. Nintendo completely removed the old restrictions, allowing players to build an island that truly reflects the real world.

Instead of vague styles, the game explicitly lets players choose a gender identity of male, female, or nonbinary. Pronouns are chosen completely separately from gender, meaning a character can have any combination of looks and pronouns desired. Furthermore, players get to decide the dating preferences for every single character. Players can choose if a character wants to date males, females, nonbinary characters, or no one at all, which fully supports aromantic and asexual identities. Finally, clothes are no longer locked behind gender rules; players can pick any event outfit style for any character during seasonal holidays.

The Mathematical Secret to the 16 Personalities

In older games, getting the right personality felt like guessing. Now, it is a proven math formula. During character creation, players adjust five sliders: Movement, Speech, Energy, Attitude, and Overall. The “Overall” slider (which goes from Normal to Quirky) is just for fun and does not change the personality type at all.

The game uses a scale from 1 to 8 for the sliders, reading from left to right. However, there is a secret trick to the math. The Movement and Energy sliders use all numbers from 1 to 8. The Speech and Attitude sliders are heavier, so the game actually skips the number 4 (using 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8) to force the personality to lean one way or another. The game adds the Movement and Speech scores together, and then adds the Energy and Attitude scores together. Where those two final numbers meet on a hidden grid decides which of the 16 personalities the character gets.

Each personality has a unique introduction phrase that characters say when they first arrive. The table below lists every personality, their group, and the exact introductory quote they use.

Personality Group	Exact Type Name	Character’s Introductory Phrase
Easy-Going (Yellow)	Softie	“People often say I’m a calming presence.”
Easy-Going (Yellow)	Carer	“I’m a bit of a people-pleaser… Sorry…”
Easy-Going (Yellow)	Optimist	“I try to always have a smile on my face.”
Easy-Going (Yellow)	Dreamer	“I know I come across pretty laid-back. I just keep my anxiety bottled up, where it belongs.”
Energetic (Red)	Charmer	“I’m always full of energy! Let’s get going!”
Energetic (Red)	Adventurer	“I tend to play things by ear and follow my whims!”
Energetic (Red)	Bubbly	“I can find the fun in anything!”
Energetic (Red)	Hot-Blooded	“People often tell me I’m very passionate!”
Reserved (Green)	Patient	“I think I’m more patient than most folks, in fact. I really like to think things through.”
Reserved (Green)	Perfectionist	“I’m serious about the things that matter, and don’t have time for the things that don’t.”
Reserved (Green)	Introvert	“I’m having fun, I promise. I just might not show it like everyone else…”
Reserved (Green)	Thinker	“I’ve been told I should think less and feel more, but I find such arguments unconvincing.”
Confident (Blue)	Busy Bee	“I set my goals high and get results. You could say I’m competitive.”
Confident (Blue)	Leader	“I prefer to see the world for what it could be, not for what it is.”
Confident (Blue)	Individualist	“You could say I’m a bit of a lone wolf. Other people tend to just get in the way…”
Confident (Blue)	Headstrong	“I don’t really care what other people say.”

Engineering Friendships and the Secret Crush Exploit

Watching characters interact is the best part of the game. For the first time, up to eight characters can live together in a single household, creating hilarious drama. Players will know exactly what a character wants by looking at the colored speech bubbles floating above their heads.

A yellow bubble means the character is hungry or wants a new outfit. An orange bubble means they want to make a new friend or introduce two other characters. A pink bubble is the most exciting because it means romance is in the air, and the character wants to ask someone on a date or propose marriage. A dark red bubble with fire means the character is furious and needs to be calmed down immediately.

As characters hang out, their friendship levels grow through hidden tiers. Platonic friends move from “Good buddy” up to “Best bud.” Best friends go from “Bestie” to “BFF.” Romantic couples go from “Super in love” to “Let’s get married!”, and married couples reach the ultimate rank of “Soul mate”.

Normally, crushes happen randomly. However, super-fans have discovered a working exploit that forces two characters to fall in love almost immediately. This trick relies on moving fast before the game’s artificial intelligence can stop it. The table below outlines the exact steps to pull off the crush exploit between the first and third characters created on an island.

Exploit Step	Action Required to Force a Crush
Step 1: The Setup	When creating the 3rd character, officially assign the 1st character as their real-world partner in the settings.
Step 2: The Fast Drop	The second the 3rd character finishes their introduction, grab them with the touch screen and drop them directly next to the 1st character. This must be done instantly, or the character will trigger a “tripping” animation and get stuck.
Step 3: Forced Hanging Out	Save the game. Make the 1st character interact with the 3rd character repeatedly until their status changes to “following [Name] around for some reason.”
Step 4: The Cutscene	Keep the camera focused on the 1st character until the classic “walking into each other” crush cutscene plays out. Confirm that the crush is love.
Step 5: The Final Push	Wait for a minigame request to pop up, beat it, and save again. When the 3rd character eventually falls over, click “I’ll bring someone over” and choose the crushing character to help them up. This triggers the final cutscene where the love is reciprocated!

How to Share Characters Without QR Codes

One of the biggest shocks for returning fans is that Nintendo completely removed the QR code sharing system. In the past, players could scan a code to instantly download cool characters. Nintendo removed this feature because the game’s text-to-speech engine has no filters. Characters can say wild and unpredictable things, and Nintendo wanted to prevent out-of-context clips from causing trouble online.

Now, the only official way to send characters to another player is through local wireless communication with a Switch console in the same physical room. Furthermore, if a player receives a character this way, that character is locked and cannot be traded to anyone else.

Because gamers are brilliant, the community quickly built a workaround. The best way to share characters now is a highly popular website called TomodachiShare.com. On this site, players upload a screenshot of their character’s face, along with a second screenshot showing all the exact slider positions and face paint settings. Players then manually copy these settings into their own game. It takes a little more time than scanning a QR code, but it works perfectly. For highly advanced players, there is also a PC save editor trick using a homebrew app like Checkpoint. Players can open their save file on a computer and change the hidden “Actual island address” code to unlock traded characters, though this requires making careful backups to avoid breaking the game.

Island Unlocks and the Mii News Network

The island starts mostly empty, but unlocking new buildings is a blast. The Town Hall is open immediately for making characters. Soon after, players unlock the Wishing Fountain, where characters donate money every single day to fund island upgrades. Next comes the Food Mart and Clothing Shop, followed by customization shops like Where & Wear, T&C Reno, and Quik Build. Many players are currently asking about the famous Concert Hall from the older games. So far, it has not appeared as a building, leading players to theorize that singing is now a random event that can happen anywhere, or that the hall is a secret reward for 100% completion.

The absolute funniest building is the Mii News Network (MNN). To unlock this TV station, players must create exactly seven characters and solve a few of their problems. Once unlocked, the game will ask where to build the tower, and the first broadcast begins.

The news station reports two different types of stories. “Breaking Newscasts” happen when a major milestone is reached, like getting 100 residents, collecting 1,000 food items, or opening the piggy bank at the fountain. “Random Newscasts” happen once a day and feature hilarious, goofy stories. A fan-favorite random broadcast is the Birthday News. On a character’s actual birthday, the news shows footage from the island hotel where everyone sings a funny “La la la” song. The game then prompts the player to blow into the Switch’s microphone to blow out the digital candles on the cake, causing all the characters to look shocked. Another great broadcast is the Seasonal Fashion Show, where characters strut down a runway wearing the latest outfits.

Secret Easter Eggs and Hidden Details

Because the developers worked on this game for nine years, they packed it with incredible hidden secrets and Easter eggs that most casual players will completely miss.

One of the coolest hidden features is the photobombing trick. If a player taps on a character’s face to zoom in and just stares at them for about 10 seconds, the game’s artificial intelligence reacts. Any other characters standing nearby will walk over and peek into the camera frame to photobomb the screen! This only works if the nearby characters are not already busy playing soccer or singing.

Another fun detail spotted by sharp-eyed fans involves the game’s treasures. Usually, treasures are just items to sell for money. However, in some of the high-level apartment rooms, characters have been seen actively petting highly detailed penguins. This heavily suggests that rare treasures can actually be used as interactive pets inside a character’s house.

Finally, the developers intentionally left in some crazy glitches. When building the game, characters would sometimes all walk in exactly the same circle or try to use the same item at the same time. While the developers fixed the game-breaking bugs, they decided to keep the harmless, weird behaviors because they thought it made the game funnier. So, if characters are acting totally chaotic, it means the game is working exactly as intended.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

To help every player achieve the ultimate island dream, here are the answers to the five most common questions about the game.

How do I unlock the Mii News Network (MNN) building?

Unlocking the hilarious Mii News Network is very simple and happens early in the game. All a player needs to do is create a total of seven different characters and move them onto the island. Once there are seven characters, the player just needs to interact with them and solve their basic problems, like feeding them or buying them clothes. Soon, the game will announce that there is too much happening on the island to keep track of, and it will prompt the player to choose a spot to build the news tower.

How do I get characters if QR codes are gone?

Nintendo removed the QR code feature to stop inappropriate characters from being shared online easily. Now, the official way to share is by using local wireless communication with a friend sitting in the same room. However, the best trick is to use the community website TomodachiShare.com. Players upload pictures of their characters along with screenshots showing the exact slider numbers and face paint settings. Anyone can visit the site, look at the pictures, and copy the settings to recreate the character perfectly in their own game.

How does the Face Paint editor handle layers and colors?

The new face paint tool lets players draw freely on faces, and it has some amazing hidden features. Players can use the alpha lock tool to draw inside a shape without messing up the edges, and they can even save a drawing as a stamp to stamp it multiple times on the face. Just remember that custom stamps delete forever once the editor is closed! Also, if dark colors like black or brown look green or red in the menu preview, do not worry. It is just a harmless glitch, and the colors will look totally normal once the character is walking around the island.

Does the game support nonbinary characters and same-sex couples?

Yes, this game is incredibly inclusive and supports all kinds of relationships! When creating a character, players can explicitly choose male, female, or nonbinary as their gender. Pronouns are picked completely separately, so players have total freedom. The game also asks for the character’s dating preferences, allowing them to date males, females, nonbinary folks, or no one at all. This means same-sex couples can easily fall in love, date, and get married on the island.

Why do my face paint creations look weird when characters blink?

The face paint tool is basically drawing a flat picture over the character’s 3D head. Because of this, the paint does not magically move when the character changes their expression. If a player draws massive, beautiful anime eyes right over a character’s eyelids, those drawn-on eyes will stay perfectly still while the real 3D eyelids blink underneath them. This can create a really funny, cursed look when the characters smile, act surprised, or get angry. To avoid this, try to draw makeup around the eyes instead of directly over the moving parts.