Miyamoto-directed Pikmin cartoon shorts to debut around Pikmin 3 launch
Pikmin producer Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed that his series is getting the cartoon treatment for the launch of Pikmin 3. It'll be a series of short clips at first, but if popular they could justify a full animated series.
Miyamoto showed one of the clips to Polygon last week, which he also directed. The cartoon was shown running on a 3DS XL, incorporating the handheld's Flipnote Studio technology.
It was developed with the help of an external animation studio, and shows Captain Olimar chopping up PikPik carrots and making them into a refreshing drink.
After the viewing he told the site, "They'll be released sometime before the release of Pikmin 3, possibly as a Nintendo video. If they're popular we could consider selling them.
"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 theatre 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."
Miyamoto added that Nintendo paired up with Toho Cinemas to release the clips to 60 Japanese cinemas for test-screenings. It's all part of his plan to lend his colourful creations more life.
"I didn't want to license our characters out to someone else to create films," he continued. "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."
What do you think of Miyamoto's pet project? Would you like to see a full Pikmin series made? Share your thoughts and dreams below.