During the E3 2012 presentation, Nintendo fans were treated to a short film featuring Shigeru Miyamoto getting ready for his appearance on stage. Along with him were several Pikmin, animated and interacting with him before he finally appeared on stage. This small taste of animation was a glimpse at what the legendary developer has been working on aside from creating games.
This past weekend at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Miyamoto unveiled his Pikmin Short Movies, a 23 minute animation starring the Pikmin that tells three stories. These three stories include, “The Night Juicer”, “Treasures in a Bottle”, and “Occupational Hazards.” With the debut of his short film, many have been wondering if Miyamoto will make the jump from game designer to film director. According to Miyamoto himself, that’s not the case. He enjoys dabbling in both.
I haven’t moved over [from game development]. But as computer graphics have gotten better, I started to feel that it’s something that I could get involved with.
Making films in the past was something that was made with a completely different skill set, but now I feel that it’s rather similar.
The shorts haven’t been made available online anywhere as of yet, but earlier this year Iwata confirmed that Nintendo was considering licensing its character IPs in projects that have never been done before. Perhaps Nintendo will be getting into animation and short films using their wealth of IPs to create media for fans.
