Nintendo are preparing a series of original animated shorts ahead of the launch of Pikmin 3, directed by the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto himself.
These are being created through the aid of an external animation studio, Polygon reports, with Miyamoto having used the Nintendo 3DS’ Flipnote Studio to create mock-up storyboards of what he wanted them to design.
“They’ll be released sometime before the release of Pikmin 3, ” he explained. “Possibly as a Nintendo Video. If they’re popular we could consider selling them.”
He continued, “We were working on several Pikmin CG animated videos and wanted more people to be able to see them. 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.”
From this, Nintendo then worked with Japanese chain Toho Cinemas to have the video placed across 60 locations, mainly to see how well received they would be.
“I didn’t want to license our characters out to someone else to create films,” Miyamoto confessed. “Instead, since I used to draw four-panel comics when I was younger, I thought it would be fun to bring a four-panel comic approach to creating video content, so we started work on these Pikmin videos.
“We didn’t have a good opportunity to announce that we were doing this, so while we were working on the movies we also created the Pikmin video that opened our E3 presentation last year.”
The first short, apparently sees Captain Olimar blending what appears to be a red Pikmin and then drinking it. When the other characters join him, he walks toward them with a knife to which they then back away only to bump into a pile of what Olimar was really cutting up – carrots.
Miyamoto explains, “When Olimar first discovered the Pikmin he named them based on the PikPik brand carrots in his home world, so he clearly loves carrots. I thought it would be fun to have a scenario where it seems like he is going to eat the Pikmin. So it’s kind of dark, but he doesn’t eat them.”
Pikmin 3 still lacks a release date, but is expected to release on Wii U during spring.
Nintendo creating animated shorts for Pikmin 3
