Most hand-drawn frames of animation in a videogame

Cuphead (StudioMDHR, 2017) is a run-and-gun shoot-'em-up for Xbox One and PC, that is comprised entirely of hand-drawn frames of animation. As confirmed by the game’s developer, StudioMDHR, Cuphead has close to 45,000 individual frames of animation – the most of any similarly hand-drawn videogame. Cuphead was inspired by the iconic “rubber hose” animation style of 1930s-era cartoons by studios such as Fleischer and Walt Disney Animation. StudioMDHR estimated that it took an average of 25 minutes to draw, ink, scan, colour and finalise each frame, putting the total time to produce all of the game’s frames of animation at approximately 18,738 hours (or two years, one month and three weeks). The closest videogame to Cuphead’s 45,000 frames of hand-drawn animation is Space Ace (Cinematronics, 1984). As confirmed by Digital Leisure – publisher of the Dragon’s Lair Trilogy (which includes Space Ace) on PS4 – the game had 34,116 frames of hand-drawn animation across its 23 minutes 43 seconds. This was closely followed by Dragon’s Lair (Cinematronics, 1983), with 31,431 frames, and Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp (Digital Leisure, 1991), with 26,541 frames.

Cuphead was developed by StudioMDHR, a Canadian game development studio consisting of brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer. Additional animation work was contributed by Jake Clark. Its development began in 2010 using the Unity game engine, and was developed from the brother's homes in Oakville, Ontario and Regina, Saskatchewan, respectively.

The game was inspired by cartoons produced by the Fleischer and Walt Disney animation studios, along with cartoonists Ub Iwerks, Grim Natwick and Willard Bowsky.

Chad Moldenhauer called Fleischer Studios "the magnetic north of his art style", who particularly sought to mimic their "subversive and surrealist" elements.