Shigeru Miyamoto has recently been quite taken with a side project he has been working on, a series of shorts designed to be viewed on the Nintendo 3DS. Miyamoto will direct the shorts whilst an external animation studio follow his demands like a bunch of, well, Pikmin. 

Yes, it seems that Nintendo have taken the choice of creating a bunch of animated shorts in the world of Pikmin to both promote the upcoming Wii U game whilst also an attempt to "give more life to the Pikmin characters."

To test the waters, Miyamoto directed a short clip to be shown in various cinemas across Japan. He used Flipnote Studio to create some samples and then discussed the project with the animation studio who finished the video. 

"We were working on several Pikmin CG animated videos and I 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."

Whilst Miyamoto was very fond of creating these animated shorts, he wasn't sure which direction to take them. He didn't want to licence out the characters to create films, so he decided the best way to distribute these shorts would be via the 3DS. 

It hasn't yet been decided whether or not these will end up as free videos on Nintendo Video or to purchase in the eShop, but if past animated shorts are anything to go by then these Pikmin videos could be released on both. 

"We have started selling Shaun the Sheep videos, so we're continuing to look at ways to expand the eShop offerings. Nintendo 3DS is great for viewing 3D video content so we wanted to look at ways to expand that offering."