Before YouTube, there was Newgrounds
where a bunch of kids brought their ideas to life with cartoons.
If this can be considered animation,
then I was one of those kids,
trying to make something special for people to watch on the internet.
Let's take a look at one of my first videos:
"The great Yoshi Migration",
uploaded on December 1st, 2003.
What the fuck was that piece of shit?
I created it, and I don't understand what the fuck just happened there.
Now in the sequel here,
If you look to the left side, you can actually see the Yoshi
continually running in place, because I didn't know how to change the size of the screen.
And then I hit you with the scrolling text,
except you see the end of the sentence first, so that kind of ruins everything.
It wasn't until 2004, where I would seek the help of the commenters.
Here the description is:
“Tell me what you like and dislike [aobut] this movie.”
As you can imagine,
the comments were very insightful.
da07panther said:
"GAY"
“Fuck you, fuck you. I'm Italian.”
I noticed all the best animations on the internet featured talented casts of voice actors
and beautiful, crisp drawings of original characters.
So...I made this.
Critics were blown away by my ultra-realistic drawing of Yoda, but that's not even the impressive part, watch this:
Yoda: "When do I start? [unnhNNnn] He said Monday. True story it is. Then Wayne the Goblin try to steal my butterfinger."
Didja hear what happened there? I swapped out the voice actor for Yoda in the middle of the scene.
And you're only gonna get that kind of professionalism from a guy like me.
Needless to say, people loved it.
They said it was the best that they've ever seen, so I knew that in the sequel, I would have to up the ante.
Apparently, Yoda: "I'M A YODA"
"DIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!"
"A-Venge Myf a ther's death."
*Blood-curdling battle cry*
Now I have to put a disclaimer on this next part, because no man, woman, or child
should ever see this in their entire life.
Please, everyone, turn this off now, and leave. For the love of God, just, please-
Megaman: "It's always fun at the F-U-C-K, It's always fun at the F-U-C-K"
*Dunkey takes a deep and painful sigh*
This is a, uh...
parody of the song by the Village People. Except I swapped out the letters YMCA for...
"Fuck".
I have to put an additional disclaimer here... because, what you are about to s- hear, can never be unheard. Please...
Please turn the video off.
"When you walk in the street, and a ninja jumps down, you say to his face;"
"Hey, yo, fuck you man. What?"
"F-U-C-K chucka-dun chucka-dun chucka-dun chucka-dun"
...if anyone still viewing this has the technology,
I am willing to go back in time, and assassinate my own self before this was uploaded.
All right, one more. Just- just one more.
Now this is one of my oldest masterpieces, called "Up My Ass", here we go.
Left Cat: "EY BOB. Ey why don't ya tell me the old story o' when you bought that frog fuckin' thing on your fucking head, why don'tcha?"
[unintelligible 13 year old noises] Right Cat: "awwellddatell da story of da frog thing on mah hed UP MY ASS."
The reason why I've taken you on this elongated intro is really to
acclimate you with what animation looks like, when you don't have the patience or talent for it.
Even though I'm probably the worst animator worldwide,
I've been doing this shit since I was 12 years old, so I know all the tricks,
I know all the cheats, and I have a huge appreciation
for quality stuff like you'll see in Cuphead.
These guys have really gone about nailing the look of this game in the most pain-in-the-ass,
time-consuming way possible, and it looks absolutely stunning for it.
Documentary: "The thousands of pencil drawings go to the inking department."
"Here, hundreds of pretty girls, in a comfortable building all their own,"
"well-lighted, air-conditioned throughout, cover the drawings with sheets of transparent celluloid."
Dunkey: Every single boss is this impossible combination of precisely-detailed drawings and fluid animation.
Let's just slow this down a little and look at how many times they had to draw this flower guy on the right here.
[Counting] 1, 2, 3,
[Counting still.] 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
[Skipped a few, but still counting] 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,
[More counting] 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,
32, 33, 34, 35,
Okay, now- let's just play that back real quick.
In two and a half seconds, they had to draw that flower guy 35 different times.
This is why you should never be an animator.
In general, these boss fights are around two minutes long,
and i'd assume in that time you'll see around 300 different frames of animation per boss.
That means 300 times drawing, inking, and coloring the one guy over there.
For this reason, the art direction of Cuphead has been universally praised.
The difficulty of the game, however, has come under some criticism.
And to be completely honest, I am NOT the best guy at video games.
I can't beat Castlevania,
I can't beat Punch-Out, and I especially can't beat Contra, okay?
And the first thing you need to know about Cuphead is that this game is a fuckin' Dickhead.
I'd say it's right on the border of "Complete Horseshit" and "Go Fuck Yourself".
In a game where every millisecond counts, the frame-by-frame animation is a perfect match.
The player is forced to carefully observe the boss while attempting to dodge 50 projectiles at the same time.
The genius part is because the bosses are so detailed, the way they telegraph their attacks can range from
incredibly obvious to frustratingly subtle, while still being fair.
On the other hand, there is a level of randomness in a couple boss fights, that can sometimes cheat the player out of a hit.
Usually with attacks that are kinda disconnected from what the boss is visually doing.
Also, some of these upgrades feel more like downgrades to me.
Steam says it took me 13 hours to beat this game, so,
7 hours on this dumb fucking dragon,
uhh, 4 hours on this piece of shit bumblebee boss,
and then the rest of the game was probably about an hour long.
"Persistence" is the key word.
Going back to Newgrounds, there was so many moments when I was a kid, that I thought I had something really special.
I worked so hard, for months on some of those movies, and when I finally put them up the reception was
"GAY"
and that was crushing for me, but for some reason
I kept going back again, and again, and again, and eventually, EVENTUALLY, I got better.
After 7 rage quits, 13 controller throws,
28 angry comments directed at the developers, I got better at the game.
So for those of you who've thrown in the towel at this point?
I'm saying; try it again, man. You can do it.
You really gotta parry those pink attacks, because that's gonna chop off a significant portion of the fight,
and, you gotta equip the Smoke Bomb and the Scattershot.
Especially the Smoke Bomb, this thing is like 100 times better than every other power up.
There are moments in Cuphead, where you'll say: "Fuck this game.",
"This is bullshit." and trust me, some parts in here really are bullshit.
But there's so much love put into these boss fights
that you can't just walk away!
You gotta see it all, you gotta beat it all,
and... you gotta buy my new hotdogs.
I give Cupfoot...
a 4 out of 5.