Image: Wayne Below
As you probably already know, if you’re a regular visitor to the area, you certainly should be! — The eShops for 3DS and Wii U will close for new purchases next week. The closure has left many of us yearning for Nintendo’s last-gen duo and the many excellent titles they host – games and more specialized apps alike. Using a selection of creative tools still available on the 3DS eShop at the time of writing, Wayne Unten, animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, has created an incredible short film that pays homage to the console and its software.
Wayne recently got in touch with us to nominate the apps he used for our countdown series (keep an eye out for that later), but we felt this awesome 30-second short (below) featured titled Toadal Disaster deserves a separate presentation.
Using the timeless Wii eShop music, it was created with Butterfly: Inchworm Animation and Colors! 3D (which we highlighted earlier in our countdown series), with a little croak from Flipnote Studio 3D (which we also highlighted) – all of which will disappear from sale when the eShop closes on March 27th.
Watch Toadal Disaster in a video below that features both off-screen 2DS footage, followed by a full-screen short cinematic, as well as a short behind-the-scenes segment at the end.
Wayne commented on his posts that he used the 2DS in the video to create the short over an extended period of time:
Less than 2 weeks before the Nintendo 3DS eShop closed, this short film was created entirely on my 2DS XL using apps only available through the eShop, as a love letter to these apps.
This was a slooow burn film that I worked back and forth on over a 22 month period to pass the time while waiting in public, like waiting at the doctor’s office, waiting for food at the Takeout or waiting while my kids skate.
Wayne’s animation prowess — which is also evident in, oh, a decade and a half of Disney tenure working on films like Frozens, Wreck-It Ralph, Moana, and Encanto — likely has something to do with this film’s incredible quality in short. Armed with the apps listed above, non-artists would surely encounter significant problems when producing mini-masterpieces like this one! We’ve seen incredible work in this direction before, and it’s still a testament to the versatility of the console and the software that something of this quality can be produced with such modest tools (and, you know, a plethora of talent). .
As you can see from a quick look at his Instagram and Vimeo feeds, Wayne is certainly a fan of the system and Nintendo. You can find more information on the Butterfly Animation website or on animatingforfun.com, but here are some more examples for you to enjoy:
We’re not sure about yours, but these make our little Flipnote look a little…um, gross with one stick figure jumping over another stick figure. Hey it’s just a sketch for a much bigger idea ok! Give us a decade or two to polish.
Let us know what you think about Toadal Disaster and these awesome little apps below.
