Prerelease:Flipnote Studio

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Flipnote Studio.

Timeline

2007

• Late 2007 - A small group of members from Nintendo EAD began developing a tool for notes and drawing for the Nintendo Wii.

2008

• Early April - Yoshiaki Koizumi and Hideaki Shimizu pitched the application they had developed as Flipbook Workshop.
• October 2nd - Ugoku Memochou (Moving Memopad) is announced during Nintendo's Fall 2008 press conference alongside the reveal of the Nintendo DSi.
• December 18th - A presentation was held to further showcase Ugoku Memochou and announce the collaboration with Hatena a week before launch.
• December 24th - Ugoku Memochou is released in Japan.

2009

• February 20th - A localized version of Ugoku Memochou is revealed under the title Moving Memo.
• April 14th - Ugoku Memochou Version 2 is revealed.
• April 24th - Ugoku Memochou Version 2 is released in Japan.
• June 2nd - Moving Memo's new title of Flipnote Studio was revealed during Nintendo's E3 presentation.
• July 29th - Ugoku Memochou Version 2.1 is released in Japan.
• August 12th - Flipnote Studio is released in North America.
• August 14th - Flipnote Studio is released in Europe and Australia.

Early Development (2007-2008)

In Iwata Asks: Nintendo DS Volume 7 (or Volume 5 for Japanese territory), an interview was held with the team behind Flipnote Studio, consisting of Hideaki Shimizu, Yoshiaki Koizumi, Junya Kondo and Yeppei Ninomiya. This interview covers the project's early development and the creation of Hatena.

Flipnote Studio began development in 2007 as a secret afterhours project between Yoshiaki Koizumi and Hideaki Shimizu with a desire to create an application that would create some kind of network between the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DSi. Koizumi pitched the idea to create a flipbook animation program to Shimizu based on his distinct art style. Features such as microphone functionality were quickly implemented, and the Wii was used to display the animations - or notes - on the big screen, all lined up next to each other. At this point in time, notes couldn't be saved.

In early April 2008, Koizumi and Shimizu pitched the application as Flipbook Workshop (パラパラマンガ工房). Although it was initially rejected by one of the programmers stating it had nothing to do with flipbook animation, the idea was further developed and underwent a name change to reflect that it could double as a notepad application. Koizumi's first change of plans was to change the application's title to Ugoku Memochou. There were also talks to develop this application as a WiiWare title, using DS Download Play to download the notebook program, send and save your drawings to the Wii, and share them around with other people via an internet bulletin board of sorts. At this point, nobody on the team was aware of the DSi's existence.

Once the team learned about the DSi, development was shifted to that platform instead and a collaboration would start with Hatena to develop the internet bulletin board, which would later be fully developed into Flipnote Hatena.

Nintendo Conference Fall 2008

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: The conference screenshot featured down below is in a clean .png format, but all other sources online are in .jpeg formats in varying degrees of quality. Where exactly does this specific variant of the image come from?

Ugoku Memochou's logo as seen during the Nintendo Conference Fall 2008. Sourced from Nintendo.

The Nintendo DSi was officially unveiled during a presentation held during Nintendo's Fall 2008 conference on October 2nd, 2008. During the conference, the Nintendo DSi's hardware and (built-in) software were shown off for the first time. Among the list of showcased software was Ugoku Memochou, which was shown briefly during Satoru Iwata's presentation. The showcased Flipnotes were that of Mario breaking bricks, Mario's head being formed from a sphere, and a stop-motion animation of Mario and Luigi fighting. Notably, the application's logo differs from the final, featuring a different font, a slightly different notepad and the mascot on top.

One screenshot was released alongside this unveiling. The screenshot in question features an early version of the UI alongside a frame of Mario standing on someone's head. The memo also has some text reading "シュ タッ" (shutatsu). The full Flipnote was showcased on Nintendo's website after release, though the kanji was removed.

• The overall UI is in a much more primitive state. Buttons and icons don't have gradients and there's no square background behind the buttons.
• The background has a different color. Because of this, the playback buttons are colored white/orange instead of orange/gray.
• A thinner font is used for all text.
• The top screen is missing the portrait outline.
• There's no buttons to send Flipnotes or exit.
• The top buttons use different icons and have text.
• The erase button doesn't have text, has a bigger icon and doesn't extend to the side of the screen.
• The second page for different colored pencils has a different button structure.
• The undo/redo buttons are smaller and don't have any text.
• The pencil, brush and eraser buttons are placed higher.
• The pencil icon was redrawn entirely.
• Patterns 1 and 6 from the brush tool are slightly different.
  • Pattern 1 is bigger.
  • Pattern 6 uses a different form.
• The big eraser icon is smaller and looks a little unpolished.
• The repeat button has a slightly different icon.
• The bottom of the screen has an orange line.
• "トップ" was changed to "もどる".

2008 Nintendo DSi Trailer

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Source of the trailer?

A promotional trailer for the Nintendo DSi was released sometime in October 2008. This trailer covers the DSi Menu, DSi Camera and DSi Sound features and briefly mentions the Nintendo DSi Browser and Ugoku Memochou (with some Flipnotes shown at 3:29). At 00:42 and 3:57, an early banner for Ugoku Memochou is shown.

This early banner features a different title reading DSうごくメモ (DS Moving Memo) without a Nintendo copyright, has a static icon, lacks curves on all four sides and has a thinner orange hardcover on top. Curiously, whenever this banner shows up in the trailer, a note is present on the bottom left stating that the application is still in development.

	Prerelease	Final
Title	DSうごくメモ	うごくメモちょう Nintendo
Icon

E3 2009

Photo of the title screen. Sourced from NintendoLimited.

The localized version of Ugoku Memochou, first literally translated from its Japanese name (Moving Memo) was revealed as Flipnote Studio during E3 2009. The version shown was based on Version 2 and doesn't include many changes that would later be present in Version 2.1. A press kit (dated May 29th, 2009) was also distributed before the start of E3.

• Since this is based on Version 2, the button to quickly access Flipnote Hatena isn't present yet.
• The manual (or "Help") button is blanked out, which was most likely just done for this showfloor demo.
• Various buttons and big texts use a generic and thicker font that less resembles the font used for the application's logo.
• Flipnotes are referred to as memo's on the title screen and calendar. The buttons for these options are different too and lack icons.
• The text "Page" and the amount of pages are swapped. This is a leftover from the application's Japanese translation.
• The text "Next Page" is a few pixels higher. The word "Next" in particular has more spacing.
• The erase button is smaller.
• The "Undo" text is moved one pixel to the right.
• The "Draw", "Paint" and "Erase" texts are 1 pixel lower.
• The lightbox icon is raised 2 pixels higher.
• "Shrink" was changed to "Resize".
• "Delete" was changed to "Erase".
• All of the icons in the edit menu are raised 1 pixel higher.
• The icons for the copy and paste buttons had their page size decreased.
• The font for the "Music" and "Sound" buttons was changed.
• The calendar uses single digits for months.
• Every day on the calendar is cut off with a dot.
• The special bonus Flipnotes - in particular the Hidden Techniques Flipnote - aren't present yet.
• The page amount on the System Memory page is 1 pixel lower.

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