Flipnote Warrior is a labor of love, but it might need your help to get finished.
Long gone are the days when animators in Japan spent their days scribbling away with pencils and pens. In the modern era, pretty much all new anime is produced digitally, and that goes for Ugomemo Senshi as well.
However, Ugomemo Senshi wasn’t created on a powerful computer workstation or top-of-the-line digital drawing pad. Instead, the artwork was produced using a Nintendo 3DS and the free sketchpad app Flipnote Studio 3D. Those humble tools don’t stop it from looking incredible, though, as creator and YouTube user Mirror Panel 3’s video proves.
If all that looks like a lot of work to do on a video game handheld that’s nearly a decade old, you’re absolutely right. It’s been four years since Mirror Panel 3 started working on Ugomemo Senshi, which translates to “Flipnote Warrior.” The project tells the tale of Mome Kugou (whose name is a reversal of the syllables in “Ugoku Memo,” Flipnote’s Japanese-language title), an aspiring young illustrator who meets an adorable mystical creature that pops out of her 3DS, then becomes a magical warrior who fights to protect artists against sinister monsters. The cast also includes a character who has no problems just letting his junk hang out and a cameo by someone who seems destined be nicknamed “handsome Hayao Miyazaki.”
Mirror Panel 3 says he found the low-spec ceiling (by today’s standards) of the 3DS appealing, since it would keep him from spending too much energy tinkering with the sort of minute details more powerful hardware would allow (though he’s doing color correcting and editing on a PC). But as impressive as the three-minute video above is, it’s just a taste of what’s to come, because the full-length version of Ugomemo Senshi/Flipnote Warrior is coming on December 4, and will clock in at 34 minutes, making it as long as some direct-to-video commercial anime releases!
▼ An older preview for the project, posted through Mirror Panel 3’s Twitter account
Before Ugomemo Senshi’s final release, though, Mirror Panel 3 is looking for a sound engineer who can produce realistic sound effects. He’s asked interested parties to contact him (in Japanese) through his Twitter account here, but whether or not you end up on the production team, we can all look forward to seeing the end result of this long Flipnote journey this winter.
Source: YouTube/ミラーパネル3 via Hachima Kiko, IT Media
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