 Tina Nevrozky gazed in amazement at the trailer for Cuphead. Here it was, finally! In a world that seemed increasingly obsessed with the third dimension, someone was making a 2D hand-drawn animated project, who'd have thought it'd be a video game, rather than an animated film, that would be trying to bring that art style back. Tina often felt like she was born in the wrong decade. Since she'd been alive earlier, there'd have been a place for her at the wonderful world of Disney animation, when artists flipped papers by hand to check their work, and nothing was spoiled by the cold, unfeeling touch of digital software. Cuphead seemed like a rare, wonderful return to the classic world of traditional animation, and as someone who was already working in the video game industry, Tina knew she ought to keep her eye on this project. As much as Tina loved the look of Cuphead, she couldn't possibly imagine just how important this game was going to be in her life. Soon enough, the Moldenhauer family was about to present her with her dream job, as she'd finally get to draw cartoons by hand for a living. Tina Nevrozky didn't always want to be an animator. When she was young, Tina was a big fan of fine art, and taught herself to oil paint by copying the works of classical artists. This wasn't her only passion. She was also a big fan of the theatre and performing on stage. Tina's two hobbies combined when she started studying illustration and design at Dawson College in Montreal, Canada. As part of a three-year course, she took a class in animation and had her a-ha moment. Animation was an art form of drawings that were also performance. Through animation, she could illustrate wonderful scenes, but she could also act, presenting the world with expressive movements that were filled with emotion. This seemed like the perfect art medium for Tina, and she began to strive for a career in traditional animation. When it came time to graduate, a teacher helped to get Tina a job creating online portals for children. She worked on an education project for National Geographic, creating animations that helped to teach the user. From this, Tina moved into game design, working on casual titles for tablets. In all honesty, Tina was completely ignorant of the gaming world. It had simply never been her thing when she was growing up. At her first gaming job, surrounded by veteran gamers, she had to sheepishly ask, What exactly is a games console? Despite Tina's inexperience, the team was happy to educate her, and she soon got a better understanding of video games, even if she still didn't feel like she was very good at them. What really clicked for Tina was animation, and she found herself desperate to know more about this art form. While working full-time, she began taking night classes in animation so she could learn more, both in a traditional college and online, where she studied with Samantha Youssef, a former Disney animator that Tina looked up to with adoration. Eventually, the desire to learn more pulled Tina away from her work. She quit her gaming job and moved from Montreal to Toronto, where she could study animation full-time. Her real passion was traditional, hand-drawn animation, a method of drawing that had fallen out of favour as more efficient tools, most notably computers, had gained prominence. Tina would lament her youth to her tutors, and ended up doing the entirety of her work on this course by hand, on an animators table, enjoying the sensory experience of feeling the paper under her hand, as well as the challenge of making every line perfect without the ability to erase her mistakes with the click of a mouse. As she worked, Tina posted personal artwork and animation on the internet, just to see what people would think of it. Unbeknownst to her, Chad Moldenhauer, one of the creators of the in-development indie video game Cuphead, was keeping tabs on her work. As the scope for Cuphead expanded, and StudioMDHR needed to take on more artists, Chad reached out to Tina, wanting to see if she'd be a good fit for their team. The style of Cuphead was very distinct, so Chad set Tina the challenge of completing a test animation first. If he and his brother Jared liked it, they'd hire her to work on the game. Tina had years of practice and education behind her. Naturally, she created a test that met the brother's expectations, and before long, she was officially working her dream job. While Tina had a fair amount of experience working in game animation by this point, StudioMDHR was unlike anything she'd ever seen before. The small team was mostly comprised of members of the Moldenhauer family, although there were a few outsiders like Tina who were also involved with Cuphead. The game had already been in development for two years at this point, so the general art style and work practices were in place. There was no physical office or studio building where everyone came together to work. All artists on Cuphead worked from home, and would share their work with each other online. There were only four animators working on the game, and just one Inka. Tina would draw her animation frames by hand in pencil, then scan them into the computer. Then she would send them online to Maya Moldenhauer, Chad's wife, who would print them out, and Inka over the top of the pencil sketches, before scanning these pictures again so that they could be coloured digitally. With Cuphead, Tina was given a theme, and sometimes details on the mechanics of how an enemy should move, and she was free to come up with whatever designs she liked. She was primarily brought in to animate platforming sections of the game, as many of the boss fights were already in place, and that meant designing a lot of smaller enemies, as well as working on some big, key boss characters. In traditional animation, the design work would be done by the senior creative team, and the animators would be given a style guide that they were expected to copy. Tina was given a lot of freedom in her work. The Moldenhauers wanted each artist to be able to create the characters they animated. That said, there were limitations to what Tina could do. Her work needed to fit the Cuphead style, as Chad and Jared had a very specific idea of what they wanted. They assigned Tina plenty of homework, giving her long lists of vintage cartoons to watch so that she could get a feel for the style they were looking for, for each character and its movement. Tina was tasked with coming up with an idea to make it stand out. No two characters could move in the same way, as this could make the game feel repetitive. Tina would come up with a series of pictures for each and every element that she needed to animate, sometimes accompanied by a few thumbnail sketches to help illustrate her idea. The Moldenhauers would pick one that they liked, or send her away to consider other ways of making the animation feel unique. The brothers knew their source material back to front. If Tina proposed an idea that didn't quite feel right, or if any of her animations skewed away from the design that the Moldenhauers were looking for, they'd present her with very specific reference material to make sure that she stayed on style. Often, this would mean that Tina would be presented with an old school cartoon to watch, with a timecode for a specific slice of animation that the Moldenhauers wanted her to incorporate into her work. While she had freedom, it was clear that she needed to hit just the right art style to make sure everything in Cuphead felt like it was part of the same era. One of Tina's most interesting projects involved a lot of sugar. The Moldenhauers assigned her the vague idea of a world filled with candy. They didn't really know her very well at the time, but Tina was incredibly pleased to work on this part of the game. It just so happened that she had a serious sweet tooth and relished the opportunity to draw a bunch of tasty treats. There was just one problem. Tina needed to make sure that all the candy and sugary products that appeared in her designs were appropriate for the time period. Cuphead was to be set in the 1930s, and so it was up to Tina to focus solely on candy and sweets that were popular in that decade. Luckily, thanks to a lot of time on Wikipedia, Tina discovered that a lot of her favorite treats had actually been around almost a hundred years ago. It turned out that kids' snack choices hadn't changed an awful lot in all that time. Tina was so pleased with her work on the game. Cuphead felt like a dream come true. Despite having felt like she had come to a world too late and that old-school animation was dead, she had the chance to embrace her retro cartoon passion and bring the skills that she'd worked on to a project that similarly cherished the forgotten world of paper animation. The moral of the story is that it's worth pursuing your passions. Tina's love of traditional animation wasn't fleeting or temporary. It stuck with her to the point that she pursued it, getting the best possible education in her chosen field. It was in large part because of her drive to learn more about hand-drawn animation that she was able to develop her skills to the point that she could get a job working on Cuphead. By seeking out chances to learn more, she turned herself into the perfect candidate for this niche project. No matter how obscure or unique your personal passions may be, there are opportunities to learn more and develop. You may not end up using your skills in the way that you'd originally expected. Tina wasn't exactly a big fan of video games when she first dove headfirst into animation, but she embraced gaming when provided with the chance to use her specific talents professionally. Go out into the world and learn about what makes you excited. Whatever it may be, if you keep pushing to develop your own personal abilities, you can find happiness from doing what you love.