How Cuphead Was Made and Struggled Finding the Right Protagonist

This Cuphead documentary details the development of 2D platformer Cuphead and goes behind the scenes of its creation. Discover more about developer Studio MDHR and its two founders, Chad and Jared Moldenhauer. Growing up as brothers, Jared and Chad loved watching cartoons from the 30s and playing run-and-gun video games such as Mega Man, Contra and Gunstar Heroes. The documentary also explores all the design decisions that Studio MDHR made and shows how the 1930s cartoon style started as a joke.

It also takes a close look at all the hurdles the team had to go through. The two brothers and other members of the team had no prior development experience before working on Cuphead so the learning curve was steep. Additionally, the studio decided to stick as closely as possible to the traditional techniques of early animation, meaning drawing every single frame of animation by hand. This unfortunately slowed down production by 80%. Furthermore, the team went through more than 150 designs for the titular character Cuphead before they landed on the right one. Lastly, Jared and Chad share some advice for aspiring indie developers and talk about what’s next for Studio MDHR.