Professional animators who still animate by hand in 2D are hard to find, says StudioMDHR’s Maja Moldenhauer. And it’s understandable given how the style of animation has given way to digital animation, and how physically demanding good animation can be.
Which is why, she says, StudioMDHR had to take care of the handful of folks it found to work on Cuphead and its DLC: Delicious Last Course – around 18 developers total, and only about six animators at the height of DLC development. Even if that meant both took a very, very long time to make – over a decade, in fact.
“It's hard to find people,” she says. “The number one thing, especially through COVID was keeping everybody happy. This is video games. Take your time. Mental health needed to be at the forefront, taking the space and time that you needed, especially over the last two years. We're like, ‘If it takes longer for the game to come out, it takes longer. Who cares?’
Moldenhauer goes further to explain that much of this attitude stemmed from other industries she and fellow leads Chad and Jared Moldenhauer had been a part of prior to Cuphead, where they weren’t necessarily given that time and space.
“If we're going to risk it all, it's going to be a company that we're proud of. It's going to be a company that is all the things, an amalgamation of all the things we've always ever wanted. Respect for each other, love and support. Things that we didn't receive in our past jobs. Well, we did, but at the end of the day there was a bottom line.”
That’s why with Cuphead, Moldenhauer says she’s not worried about the possible financial success of Delicious Last Course. She and StudioMDHR have already made the art they’re proud of, and it’s enough to simply be able to put it out into the world. On the day our interview was held, she tells me Delicious Last Course had just gone gold, describing the feeling as “euphoric.”
“Seeing it all come together in the last few months, working on the little enemies or this and that, you can't picture it,” she says. “Seeing it come to life, taking shape and form and it's beautiful. It's exactly what we wanted…[it’s] art for art's sake in that you can't explain that to people who are driven by numbers or things like that. You really can't.”
For more Cuphead ahead of its Delicious Last Course DLC on June 30, 2022, featuring new bosses, a new playable character, and more, check out our reviews of the original game and the Netflix show, aptly titled, The Cuphead Show!.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
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