We didn’t 100% think of looping when we began preproduction on visuals, but as we studied the cartoons, we saw it kind of synced up with how video games work. Was it a budgetary thing? I notice you’re doing it in Cuphead, where it’s synchronized with the music and the gameplay. There’s a lot of sequence looping in these older animated shorts. Like in Bimbo’s Initiation, where there’s a knife coming out of the wall and suddenly it has a mouth and teeth…
Having eyes and mouths on almost every object doesn’t help. Why would a character go from super happy to just insane and showing his gums like a wild dog because he wants a piece of candy? It’s only for two or three seconds, and then it cuts back to “Oh, the guy’s 100% normal.” It almost has a David Lynch vibe to the whole idea and flow of the animation of the time, and you can’t quite put your finger on why it’s disturbing, but it’s all the small pieces coming together to give it that feel. But then when you watch it, it doesn’t make sense, it actually reads wrong. So if they felt like this character should do something funny with his face and that was 100% out of character, they did it.
We’ve pondered that for a while, like why are so many ‘30s cartoons so creepy? And it probably has to do with the fact that the animators were free to do whatever they wanted. There’s something creepier and more subversive about the surrealism of the sort of 1930s animation you’re channeling in Cuphead.
Sleeping Beauty and all the Disney stuff scared me as a kid, but in a way that was comprehensible. Mickey Mania’s probably the only true attempt, but the technology wasn’t there, so as cool as it was, it wasn’t an exact replica of what the ‘30s had. It’s going to be amazing when someone tries to do a cartoon game like the ’30s style. So that had been in the back of our minds, and even as we saw the technology change in gaming, we thought hey, eventually people are going to be doing cartoon games. So this is a two-sibling project, right? You and your brother Jared are working on this?Įven in our friends group growing up, they always said “Hey, these ‘30s cartoons are kind of funny, but we like this and this.” We always stood out as the weirdos who liked watching the ‘30s cartoons. When fans follow us, that’s awesome, but at the same time if we’re going to pour our hearts into the project, every day we look at it, it has to surprise us. We’re just dumb enough that we wanted to do something that we loved. And the other side is that it’s a ton of work. I think it has to be partly that they have the same initial feeling as us, that there wouldn’t be a fan base for it. Why do you think that is? Why do you think someone in gaming hasn’t drawn more on the language of cartoons? I mean, yeah, old cartoons are cool, but look at what Pixar is making. And there was no real love for cartoons, at least that you could see around people’s blogs, or around the Internet, or just talking to our friends. Moldenhauer: We were worried when we first set out with this style that there wouldn’t be a huge fan base, just that this had never been tried in games in the past.
TIME: I think it’s accurate to say that Cuphead looks like nothing we’ve seen in video games before. Viewers can expect plenty of rat-a-tat dialogue, endless outlandish visual jokes, a few devilish scares, and some cartoon violence.Cuphead lead artist Chad Moldenhauer gave TIME an exclusive look behind the scenes of how the studio animates the game. The only thing that can come between the tight-knit brothers? Cookies. Much like the Studio MDHR game, which was published in 2017, the show follows a couple of cups, brothers Cuphead and Mugman, who are always chasing fun and adventure in their wacky homeworld, Inkwell Isles, even as they race the clock to repay a debt to the Devil himself. The Cuphead Show! is very much a kids’ program, but it skews a bit older, arriving on your screen with a TV-Y7 rating. If the imagery in the trailer rings a bell, that’s because Cuphead, the game, and now The Cuphead Show! are inspired by 1930s-style animation, particularly the old Mickey Mouse cartoons from Walt Disney and shorts produced by Fleischer Studios. The popular run and gun action game has been adapted into a new Netflix animated series, The Cuphead Show! The streamer will drop all 12 episodes, running 12 minutes each, on February 18, and Fatherly is here with an exclusive clip.