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One of the best video game art books just received a sequel. The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course was published by Dark Horse Books on November 5. Cuphead fans have three editions to choose from: a standard hardcover, Deluxe Edition hardcover, and Kindle ebook. And for the first time since going up for preorder a few months back, the Deluxe Edition has received a discount at Amazon, dropping the price to $89 (was $100). You can also get a big discount on The Art of the Cuphead Show, which chronicles the making of wonderful Netflix animated adaptation. Just like the original Cuphead art book, this is a stunning companion that beautifully captures the intricate process of animating a game designed to look like a 1930s-era cartoon. This article was originally published last month as an exclusive preview of the first few pages from The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course. Since then, I've looked flipped through the full book in digital format. My takeaway? Cuphead fans are in for a treat. You can check out a handful of pages from the book below to get an idea of what to expect.
The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course Standard Edition
The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course is a 272-page oversized hardcover focused exclusively on Cuphead's brilliant 2022 DLC (Delicious Last Course). The book takes fans on a frame-by-frame journey through the expansion's seven bosses and The King's Leap challenge arena. Delicious Last Course also introduced Ms. Chalice as a playable character and numerous new NPCs who will likely be featured in this art book. If you've played Cuphead, you know the level of detail on display in each of the game's inventive boss battles. The DLC actually has as many frames of animation as the base game, despite it only comprising about 25% of the full Cuphead experience. The Art of Cuphead, which focuses on the base game, is a fascinating, must-have book for fans, so we'd expect The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course to provide a similarly insightful look inside Studio MDHR's creative process. Along with frame-by-frame animation of the bosses from The Delicious Last Course, the book contains early concept art as well as unused ideas. If you haven't checked out the art book for the base game, you can save about $20 off its list price at Amazon.
The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course Deluxe Edition
Big Cuphead fans will want to check out The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course Deluxe Edition, a limited release featuring a mint-green foil-stamped slipcase, a fold-out portfolio case with a trio of acetate cells, and a ribbon bookmark. It matches the Deluxe Edition for the base game's art book. Fair warning: The Art of Cuphead Deluxe Edition has only been available to purchase from third-party sellers for years at this point--unlike some video game art books, it truly was "limited edition." If you're interested in the fancy version, you probably don't want to wait too long to place your order. Normally $100, the Deluxe Edition is on sale for $89 at Amazon.
Both physical editions have 272 pages, so the preview pages shown below will match your copy of the book when it arrives.
Page 12
"We knew from the beginning that Ms. Chalice had to stand alongside Cuphead and Mugman as an iconic part of a trio. This meant meticulous iteration on her character expressions, including the existence of an 'evil form--Ms. Malice!"
Page 13
"Unlike Cuphead and Mugman, Ms. Chalice only takes corporeal form within a level. These character intro concepts from Animation Supervisor Hanna Abi-Hanna illustrate the challenge of capturing Chalice's emergence from the Astral Plane."
Page 16
"Through Ms. Chalice's animations, we wanted to capture the wide-eyed ingenue that was prototypical of the 1930s cartoon female lead. At the same time, we wanted her movements to imbue her with the sense of grit determination, and impishness common in other characters from the era."
Page 17
This page shows frame-by-frame animation cells of Ms. Chalice crouching.
Page 18
"As with Cuphead and Mugman, Ms. Chalice needed her very own 'death ghost'--the sprite which players see after your character has lost their last hit point..."
Page 19
"Pictured above, the unique frames of Ms. Chalice's death ghost as it floats tearfully off screen, illustrated by Animation Supervisor Hanna Abi-Hanna."
The Art of the Cuphead Show
The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course is the second new art book on the franchise this year. In September, Dark Horse published The Art of the Cuphead Show, a 256-page hardcover book examining the creation of Netflix's great animated series that ran for three seasons in 2022. We previewed The Art of the Cuphead Show before its publication, so you can check out a few pages from that book. Amazon is selling the hardcover edition of The Art of the Cuphead Show for $35 (was $50).
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