Nintendo may be getting into the cartoon business.
The company behind the Wii U, 3DS and countless colorful gaming creations has been secretly toying around with the idea of creating and releasing a series of original animated shorts based on one of their relatively new video game franchises. The shorts, designed to be viewed on the company’s 3DS, would either be given away or possibly sold through Nintendo’s online store.
Nintendo’s senior managing director and prolific game designer Shigeru Miyamoto is personally overseeing the creation of the cartoons, which are based on the Pikmin series he first created for the GameCube in 2001.
“They’ll be released sometime before the release of Pikmin 3” due out this year, Miyamoto told Polygon in a recent interview in New York City. “Possibly as a Nintendo video. If they’re popular we could consider selling them.”
Miyamoto showed off one of the cartoons, which he directed, after a nearly hour-long meeting with Polygon had wrapped up. As I was leaving, a Nintendo employee beckoned me back into a meeting room and an awaiting Miyamoto.
“Mr. Miyamoto wants to show you something,” he said.
The game designer placed 3DS XL on the table in the room and started a video.
This first video was created by Miyamoto with the help of an external animation studio. The game developer said he used the 3DS’ Flipnote Studio, flipbook creation tool to mock-up samples and then discussed the project with the director of the short, working with the animation studio to complete the video.
“We were working on several Pikmin CG animated videos and wanted more people to be able to see them,” he said. “I had gone to a movie theater and saw the videos telling people to turn off their cell phones and thought we could create a Pikmin version of that, but instead decided to do the 3D glasses video.”
(via Polygon)