 How far would you go to make your dream project a reality? Would you make a deal with the devil and gamble everything you own for a chance at success? For Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, creating their own magnum opus was no easy task. When the pair of brothers started working on a video game inspired by Golden Age cartoons, they had no idea just how much work would be involved in bringing their project to life. Jared and Chad's game evolved from a simple hobby project that they worked on over weekends into an enormous, life-changing experience that saw them quitting their jobs, refinancing their homes, and betting their entire livelihoods on the hope that maybe, just maybe, people might love their work. It took seven years to complete their game, but when it finally was released, Chad and Jared saw their humble little passion project take the world by storm. This is the story of the tumultuous birth of Cuphead. Chad and Jared Moldenhauer were not only brothers growing up, they were best friends. The pair came from a large family, but they got along best with each other, bonding over their shared love of video games and animated cartoons. Jared and Chad spent hours together, watching VHS tapes that showcased a bygone era of animation. Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor Man, and the early adventures of certain cartoon mouse were all in regular rotation in the cassette player. Their pair poured over each individual frame, falling slowly but inevitably in love with the wacky, bendy cartoons that were already 50 years old by this point. As the brothers grew up, and even as they moved to different cities in their home country of Canada, they constantly kept in contact. The wife, Maya, liked to joke that he spent more time talking to Jared than to her. As the two chatted back and forth about their interests, they had the idea to try making their own video game. This was only ever planned as a hobby project. They simply wanted to try their own hands at making a game like Contra or Gunstar Heroes, something tough that harkened back to the old school shooters of their childhood. Their initial plans fizzled out, but it didn't really seem to matter, as it was only ever something to do for fun. The games industry of the year 2000 wasn't designed to allow small, independent game makers to get any attention. Then, a decade later, with the success of indie hit Super Meat Boy, which traded high on punishingly difficult platforming, the pair figured that perhaps it was time to reignite their plans. Jared and Chad imagined a game that took their two great loves and mashed them together. Their obsession with hand-drawn 2D animation of the 1930s still burns strong, and they wondered whether they could make a video game using traditional animation methods that could also be a gruellingly challenging bullet-hell shooter. For inspiration, they looked at a very obscure cartoon. In a 1936 animation released long before World War II broke out, Mickey Mouse has shown representing America as an evil invader, while a heroic Japanese character with a cup for a head morphs into a tank to protect civilians. It's a bizarre cartoon to say the least, but it had stuck in Chad and Jared's head so firmly that they felt like they wanted to create their own tribute character. Thus, Cuphead was born. Jared and Chad weren't interested in taking shortcuts to make their game match their vision. The artwork would be paramount to the experience, and that meant doing things the old-fashioned way. They were going to use authentic cartooning paper, pens, and paints to hand-draw every single frame of animation that would appear in the game. This proved to be a pretty difficult process. Maya, Chad's wife, joined the project as an artist and ordered a huge stack of special transparent animation cell paper, thinking that she'd bought enough to more than cover the making of the game. It didn't take long for the entire supply to run dry, and Maya had to order twice as much a game in order to cover the small team's needs. As it turned out, animating an entire video game involved far more drawings than even a big-budget traditionally animated cartoon movie. Aware of their limitations, Chad and Jared agreed that while they'd like to make a long, sprawling shooter akin to the games of their childhood, they'd probably be better off making something smaller in scope. They had the idea to create a boss rush of sorts, with the player facing a series of big, colourful enemies without too much platforming or exploration. The initial plan was to create eight of these bosses and then possibly expand the roster with downloadable content if the initial game proved a hit. All of this work continued around Jared and Chad's day jobs. Along with Maya and some other helpers, they worked on weekends and evenings, having fun building something that they could be proud of. This, they hoped, would be a fun game that they could get some enjoyment out of, and maybe other people out there might like it too. Nevertheless, the Moldenhauers were making something special, and this was clearly obvious. Their game was selected for debut at E3 2014 after four years of initial work on the project, and audiences went wild. There wasn't a playable demo ready at this point. The team insisted that they weren't even halfway through finished with the slow animation process at that point, but instantly their game earned a massive following. The next year, Cuphead returned to the show and the Moldenhauers suddenly discovered that popularity comes at a cost. Audiences who had been looking forward to the game were disappointed to learn that it was going to be so small. They weren't aware of how much work was going on behind the scenes, and they felt that a simple boss rush was a wasted opportunity for such an inventive premise. In the wake of the show, Jarrod and Chad had some difficult decisions to make. Could they expand their game? Should they return to their older plans for a more expansive title and create the Cuphead that they'd initially dreamed up? This work wasn't easy. Committing to a bigger game would mean betting their entire lives, all their savings, and even their homes on the hope that their little project would prove a success. But the fan reaction from E3 was clear. People wanted a bigger game. Hesitantly, Chad and Jarrod quit their day jobs and remortgaged their homes to provide enough capital to start their own video game production company. This was it. They were going all in. It was an enormous gamble, and they didn't want to have to face the devil if they lost, but they were going to risk everything for the chance to make Cuphead the game they'd always dreamed of making. Expanding the team for this new, larger vision of Cuphead wasn't easy. Jarrod and Chad had to find artists that shared their own sensibilities and their love of old-school animation. There was a lot of guesswork involved, looking at people's portfolios and wondering whether they'd be able to capture the spirit of early animated classics. Even once the new workforce was hired, the Moldenhowers had their hands full trying to get the new artists up to speed. This process of hand animation was unfamiliar to most modern game artists, and that meant having to relearn the process of drawing as they grappled with a strange, archaic work method. Drawing things by hand meant that tiny changes to a character's animation or size or movement pattern would mean starting all over again. If an enemy's arm needed to be moved down by a few pixels, that meant redrawing the entirety of every frame that needed to be fixed. It also didn't help that, as new gameplay mechanics and ideas occurred to the team, older parts of animation had to be completely redrawn. Nevertheless, the artists that joined the team rose to the occasion and quickly started to produce excellent work that Chad, Jarrod and Maya approved of. The team also allowed for some concessions. While the backgrounds for the game were all painted traditionally, the animated sprites were coloured digitally. After some tests, the team found that using Photoshop to add in colour made things a lot quicker, but it didn't detract from the art style that the game was aiming for. Even so, the new expanded scope meant that progress was slow. There were plenty of delays along the way, while it seemed to the public as if Cuphead would never actually be finished. A game that had been started in 2010 and announced in 2014 still wasn't ready after years more work. Finally, in 2017, the game was completed. Chad and Jarrod took a deep breath as they observed their work, pleased that they'd made something they were proud of. As Cuphead launched around the world, gamers quickly embraced the quirky title, falling in love with its beautiful artwork and tough as nails gameplay. It turned out that there really was a large fan base eager to explore the retro-animated world that the Moldenhauers had created. The moral of the story is that patience will be rewarded. You may start on your own creative projects, as Jarrod and Chad did, without realising just how much work will go into achieving your goals. It's not always easy to make something special, and it can be tempting to take the easy way out and do things quickly in order to avoid having to commit too much time and effort to your project. Effort will always shine through in creative work. The reason why Cuphead drew attention right from the start was because Chad and Jarrod poured their hearts and souls into making the game that they'd initially been inspired to create. They refused to cut corners, and even though it took almost a decade to complete their hobby project, they finally made it happen. Don't try to rush art. It may take a long time to make something you can be proud of, but it's better to say that you've tried your best than to take the easy way out for the sake of getting things done quickly. If you push yourself to do your best, you'll feel far more satisfied with your finished creation.