In a recent Iwata Asks segment with Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario Galaxy director Yoshiaki Koizumi, and Yoichi Kotabe, ex-illustrator and 3D artist at Nintendo — and Toei animation veteran — the group casually discusses potential features that could be included in the next version of Flipnote Studio.
Kotabe: Sometimes as I was scribbling away, I wished I had a tool to help me out. It wasn’t exactly a fly in the ointment, though.
Koizumi: What kind of tool do you mean?
Kotabe: Like a sketching tool. For example, if I wanted to draw a girl skipping, in order to finish off her face neatly, I wanted to sketch it first, but didn’t have the tool. If I could use grey to draw a rough sketch, then I could draw it accurately.
Iwata: Don’t worry. We plan to include such a tool in Flipnote Studio Version 2.
Koizumi: We’ll include a layering function in Version 2. First, you can draw a rough sketch as one layer, then you can place another layer over it to polish it off.
Koizumi goes on to elaborate how he views a potential V2 of the application being rolled out:
Koizumi: First we’re just going to release the bare necessities, then later, just when everyone wants more functions, we’ll release Version 2. If we handed users a bunch of functions at once, they might get confused. Also, the absolute minimum necessary features are explained in writing, but only icons serve for all the rest.
Perhaps there will come a day when we see a concept like WarioWare: DIY meeting with Flipnote Studio? The DSi could probably handle simplistic 3D game creation software, too. Maybe the next wave of innovate portable RPGs will be community-developed once that happens!
Update: The North American / European version of Flipnote Studio is V2. We’re starting off with the most recent version. Sorry for any confusion. Thanks to MadMirko for the heads up!
