TV - Movies
The Challenge
The Cuphead
Show Creative
Team Faced in
Development
By MIKE WORBY
“The Cuphead Show!” is based on one of the most successful indie video games of the last decade and was inspired by the Max Fleischer cartoons from animation’s golden age. The show emulates the 1930s classic madcap cartoon look, but surprisingly the distinct visual style wasn’t the biggest challenge for the show’s creators, it was the fact that they needed to give the characters personalities.
“Well, the biggest challenge and the biggest joy of doing it was we had this amazing visual smorgasbord of characters to choose from,” explained show creator Dave Wasson, “But none of them had real personalities yet.” The video game “Cuphead” had a zany point, but it served little more than to direct players to move to a location and fight the boss.
Since the game features no voice acting, Wasson explained, “We got to create characters, and give them real personalities, and cast the voices. That was super fun to do.” Art director Andrea Fernandez further elaborated, “It was a lot more about comedy than it was lore. And I think that’s a little different than other projects that come from that video game space.”