It's incredibly difficult to fully appreciate hand-drawn animation without physically doing
it, so that's why I'm in here.
Technically, this is a dark room, but I'm using this light table over here to put together
a 1 second animation with just charcoal and paper.
Now of course back in the '30s, they used celluloid, pen, and ink, which only made this
process even longer.
But regardless, let me show you the one second animation I've made.
This looping animation took me five hours to complete, and it's one second, so I can
only imagine what making '30s cartoons, and Cuphead, a game that stylizes itself after
them, was like.
For classic cartoons there was a large staff of animators, photographers, inkers, etc,
but Cuphead was only done by 19 people, only seven of which were actual animators.
The game took seven years to make because each frame of animation had to be meticulously
drawn and animated on paper in order to capture that style.
In stylizing itself like classic cartoons, Cuphead places itself amongst those cartoons,
specifically the work of Max Fleischer and his studio.
Fleischer's cartoons are incredibly groundbreaking.
Famously, Fleischer invented the rotoscope, a device that allows for fluid animation to
be done over live action film.
The device taught Max and his brother, Dave, how to create animation.
It's legacy led to the motion capture technology used so much today for animation and special
effects.
But as time went on, the brothers didn't rely so much on it, using it primarily for
complex movements and reference.
They learned the art of animation, and it liberated them, allowing them to break from
the confines of realistic movement, and define the wildly stylized nature '30s cartoons
have.
In these cartoons, everything is fair game for a gag, a twist, or a character.
The world is truly alive in these cartoons.
Contrary what Disney was doing, The Fleischer Cartoons also took on a more risque and urban
feel, characterized by Betty Boop.
Betty is not your typical happy-go-lucky cartoon character.
She's promiscuous, independent, and rebellious, representing everything her flapper design
alludes to.
On top of this, Fleischer's cartoons had an edge in their content, like in Ha Ha Ha
where Betty and KoKo accidently drug the entire city of New York with laughing gas, or in
Swing You Sinners where Bimbo tries to escape the army of the dead and the judgement of
his sins.
These cartoons had some genuinely demented imagery in them, and pushed the medium of
animation with their surreal worlds, in which everything seems to dance.
Fleischer had a very close relationship with sound.
Four years prior to Steamboat Willie Fleischer had a series called Song Car-Toons which pioneered
the "Follow the Bouncing Ball" approach to karaoke singing.
Moreover, though, they were experiments of early sound film before The Jazz Singer would
usher in the sound era.
When sound was popularized, Fleischer's relationship flourished.
As previously stated his cartoons had dancing elements to them.
The sound is so closely knit to what appears on screen, that the screen seems to dance
along to the music.
Many of the cartoons have a musical number in them.
These numbers gave the first film appearances of many of the jazz legends working at the
time, such as Cab Calloway.
Take a look at this musical number from Minnie the Moocher.
This sequence here sums everything I'm talking about.
Betty and Bimbo are terrified as they stare ghosts, electric chairs, and demons in the
face.
Meanwhile, Cab Calloway's famous dancing it rotoscoped onto this ghost.
The whole world has character as it moves to this obituary song about a homeless lady
in Indianapolis.
Through this frequent emphasis on the sound of the cartoon along with its wild visuals,
the Fleischer cartoons begin to serve as a microcosm of the jazz era of the 1930s.
Think about it, they have dark, depressing themes, just like many of the popular Blues
and Jazz songs of the era, including Minnie the Moocher, and almost improvisational movement
that subverts expectations of the world's rules, relevant to jazz as a genre subverting
expectations with its breaking away from musical structure with improvisation, as well as the
disillusionment with the world as it was in the Depression, and plunging itself into another
world war.
[c][d][e][f]
Now, in 2017, we have Cuphead.
Complete with live jazz, hand-drawn animation, and a slough of references to classic cartoons,
Cuphead wears its influences proudly.
It goes so far as to name it's world "Inkwell Isle" as a reference to Inkwell Studios,
the first studio founded by none other than Max Fleischer.
Along with its frequent and direct homage to Fleischer's work, Cuphead captures the
same feel the Fleischer cartoons do.
Just like these classic cartoons, Cuphead is married to darker themes, expressive animation,
and lively sound, but takes those things a step further by adapting them to interactive
language of games.
All of this has been achieved through the brilliant levels and boss fights, well except
the dragon, screw that dragon.
But in the beginning, the central premise of the game underscores the dark tones found
in classic cartoons.
Cuphead and Mugman made a deal with the devil when they were gambling.
When Cuphead rolls wrong, the Devil gets their souls.
But, in making a compromise, Cuphead and Mugman get to keep their souls, if they collect the
debts of the bosses in the game.
Of course, with a premise involving deals with the demonic, gambling addictions, and
debt, the subtle dark themes are established, but Cuphead takes this a step further with
its character design.
Chad Moldenhaur, the lead artist for Cuphead, was influenced by the creepy character design
of these classic cartoons, saying in an interview with Time Magazine, "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."
[..] 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.
Having eyes and mouths on almost every object doesn't help."
So, Cuphead brings all manner of objects to life in an unsettling way.
The Run and Gun Level "Funhouse Frazzle" really demonstrates this.
Cars, toy ducks, walls, star cannons, mini rockets, jack-in the boxes, jacks, and tubas
all come to life with a unique flair and personality.
The unsettling living wall and jack in the box capture that creepy element.
The wall opens its mouth, holds out a sign saying "uh oh," a subtle nod to Looney
Tunes director Tex Avery, and then shoots its tongue across the screen.
This sign is an homage, and adds to the aesthetic and feel, but also blends with gameplay as
a telegraph for an attack.
The jack in the boxes certainly are unsettling as well.
The box has a spinning realistic eye on it, and the "Jack" isn't so comforting either.
But when it attacks, Jack pops out, laughs, goes back in, the hat lingers for a while,
then shoots at the player's current location.
The laughing and the lingering serve as similar telegraphing elements, creating a visual and
auditory cue alerting the player of the projectile.
But also it serves as a great example of Cuphead's ability to make anything a dangerous object
that can hurt the player, helping it bring the world to life, like Fleischer's cartoons
did.
Furthermore, this is consistent with the art style.
When a cartoon character rapidly moves, they do not move all at once.
Often a piece of them, such as a hat, will remain before it too moves.
The way these characters move in both Run n Gun and Boss fights also serve to capture
the expressiveness, meaning the stylized movement and characters, of these cartoons.
In the level "Ruse of an Ooze" Cuphead finds himself fighting a blob name Goopy le
Grande.
Most of this boss fight plays out a lot like Monstro from the Binding of Isaac, but in
his final phase his own gravestone absorbs his consciousness and begins to attack the
player.
When Goopy comes in to crush you, notice the way he tilts back, telling the player to get
out of the way, before falling down.
Jake Clark, the animator for this boss, says at GDC, "I not only get change of shape,
but change of color and perspective as well, cause I find the more something changes, the
more visual gravity it's going to have."
When I say that Cuphead takes the feel of these '30s cartoons and adapts them to gameplay,
this is what I mean.
The gravestone has the same absurdity and darkness of these classic cartoons, and would
not feel out of place in any of them, but also moves in such a way as to convey the
size and weight of the character, as well as give a clear antic to the player to move.
The intensity of this situation is only emphasized by the music.
As previously stated, Cuphead's soundtrack was recorded by a live jazz band.
Knowing Max Fleischer's, and really all animators at the time's relationship with
music, it's no surprise Cuphead's music bolsters the game so well.
The game frequently uses looping animations, such as this one of Cuphead bobbing up and
down, to create that "dancing" feel the cartoons have.
Almost all the bosses have some kind of idle animation that loops to give the impression
of dancing.
But jazz is in more than just the animation and music.
Cuphead's boss fights feature a heavy amount of randomness in their attacks.
The order of attacks, projectiles, patterns, and locations are all fair game to be randomized
from boss fight to boss fight, which ends up accounting for a lot of the game's unrelenting
difficulty.
But, these random elements force an improvisational, almost jazz-like gameplay in the player.
The player can never predict where a boss will be, what attack they will do, or, in
some situations, where they will be able to attack the boss from.
I mentioned this in my video on creativity focused games, which I call Canvas games,
but jazz requires learning a set of certain rules before improvisation can be done well.
Cuphead's gameplay works in the same way.[g] It's near impossible to beat a boss on the
first try.
The player has to learn what attacks the boss does, and how to avoid them, before they can
really beat the it.
In my playthrough, there was only one instance where we actually beat the boss on the first
try, that being the first boss, The Root Pack.
These different attacks and patterns are the fundamental rules the player has to learn,
so that when the order of the attacks, for example, is randomized, the player can improvise
their gameplay in order to properly avoid it.
This jazz-like improvisation is perhaps the biggest way Cuphead introduces gameplay to
the style of 30's cartoons, and thusly places itself in context among them.
Cuphead's the type of game that's almost impossible to fully appreciate when you play
it.
It's difficulty requires such a deep focus on movement and attacking, that the beautiful
watercolor backgrounds and subtle animation details can be missed.
Listening to the soundtrack while making this video, it's like listening to a really fast
jazz album for the first time, because when you play you aren't acutely aware of it.
What's so great about the game is that it's playing experience is fast paced and a ton
of fun, but it's viewer experience is awe-inspiring, since it allows you to truly take in all the
gorgeous detail Studio MDHR spent seven years on.
It's homage done right, and in a year where homage[h]s to the works of the past are extremely
prevalent, and all done incredibly well, Cuphead counts itself among the best.
[a]I like how you frame your videos in the intro with a personal thing.
:) [b]Thanks babe.
[c]Might have spent too long talking about old cartoons?
Lemme know.
[d]I kinda love it tbh.
I think you could probably tighten some stuff up.
But a lot of it leans into what Cuphead is so it's hard to ditch some stuff.
[e]I kinda like it, but maybe it could use an "Alright so I'm going to talk about the
history of traditional animation for 5 minutes" or something idk
[f]Yes and no.
You talk about them for a while, but it's all relevant.
The thing is, you've actually got a couple different points.
You start on animation, you go to the creepy edginess of the cartoons, and the land on
sound and jazz.
Then you go through each one of those things in relation to Cuphead.
If you're worried about going on for too long in the intro about the cartoons, I'd suggest
breaking it up into its parts.
Start with explaining Fleisher cartoons, go to animation and and edginess because they're
kinda linked, and explain about how Cuphead uses them as telegrpahing and such.
Then go back to the 30s and explain Fleisher's relationship with sound and their context
within the jazz era, and then expand with how Cuphead's jazzy soundtrack relates to
its improvisational gameplay.
[g]THIS IS SO GOOD HOLY CRAP [h]nice little wrap-up. :)
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