Games ARE work

A lot of the feedback we got from people who played Cletus Clay at Eurogamer last year made it clear that you wanted to see more variety in our aliens. We are listening, and we are currently working on creating additional squishy pink extraterrestrial lovelies for Cletus and his brother Emmet to pummel.

As with a lot of our models, the alien is animated in sections: we have alien body animations, alien head animations and alien weapon animations. To add some variety we are concentrating on giving some of the aliens different head types.

To achieve this we are using a mixture of Photoshop wizardry and new clay models. For example, Mr One-Eyed-Alien (third from the left) was created using the original alien head and some Photoshop work. The head with the segmented eye stalks (second from the left) was created using part of the original alien head and new clay eye stalks that were photographed and digitally added.

Anthony is very keen that the alien heads are different enough to provide variety, but similar enough to make it clear that they are all part of the same Alien race. For example, Mr Three-Eyed-Alien (fourth from the left) is perhaps a bit too different from his Alien brethren
and so probably won’t make the cut.

Anthony and Sarah are both brainstorming to come up with as many different and weird looking alien heads as possible. Not all of them will make it into the actual game as only the very best will receive the Anthony seal of approval.

Sarah is back in the office having given a talk at Animex, the international animation festival. She remembered to breathe whilst on stage so didn’t pass out, and her audience were real gems so she had oodles of fun.

There was a prize draw at the end of her talk where 3 people walked away with some games and packs of clay. Let’s hope the winners post some pictures of their clay creations!

Having spent the last few months writing the Cletus team’s blog posts I’ve now been asked to give my first talk at Animex, the International Festival of Animation and Games. Held at Teeside University, Animex is a mixture of speeches, workshops exhibitions and screenings from all areas of animation, including games. This is the first time I’ve given a talk like this about working on Cletus Clay and although I am a little nervous, I am mostly over excited and a bit squeaky.

Looking through the speakers and seeing people like Scott Campbell from Double Fine Productions and Tristan Reidford from Valve has made me feel really honoured to be asked to appear at Animex. Hopefully I will do Anthony and the Cletus Clay team proud. Wish me luck!

Happy New Year everybody!

I've been back-and-forth a bit on the subject of the game's music for a long time. I had recorded a few tracks a long time ago; mostly raucous bluegrass-inflected stuff as you might expect, but I don't want to simply do the obvious thing. It's going to have to have some banjo in there - that's inevitable - but I also want to mix in a chiptune/old-school arcade game angle, and some retro sci-fi ambience as well. And find a way to put these elements together in a way that sounds genuine, rather than just a pastiche.

Anyway, these are a couple of instruments I've had for years, which I have recently been trying to repair. The first one is a banjo mandolin which I've always hated - it's fiddly to play, impossible to keep in tune, and has a tone that is reminiscent of a traffic accident. But having recently taken off half the strings, dropped the action significantly, and restrung it as a banjo ukulele instead, I think it may have some potential after all. The other is my Yamaha 20M analogue synthesiser, which I love, but it stopped working several years ago. Being 30 years old now, a lot of its internal electronics have simply worn out, and I am slowly replacing all the fritzed components with new ones. It's a big job - it's like a TARDIS in there - but I hope I can successfully get it working again one day.

Together, these instruments kind of sum up what I'm trying to do with the music for Cletus Clay. Minimal, but with character. A mixture of retro and retro's granddad. Stubbornly analogue, lo-fi, anachronistic and unusual. And just to make things more interesting, I'm going to attempt to create this new kind of music while simultaneously developing a video game...

So, the Tuna people are off for a short holiday, possibly in the traditional Christmas snow. Meanwhile, here in New Zealand, the start of the Christmas season brings the first of the really nice weather as summer finally starts to kick in properly. I'm going to try to resist the temptation to get a beer, sit on the porch, and work on getting my legs brown, and instead try to do some more prep work for the explosion of Cletus-related activity that the new year will be bringing me. It's time to decide on some of those details that I have so far managed to avoid making a decision about.

Oh well, enjoy the holiday, everybody. 2010 could be a big year...

Have a look at the graphics for one of the minigames... running on a clay arcade cabinet! Well, sort of - this is just a mock-up for now. Because the hands are seen in greater detail than they are in the rest of the game I had to experiment to find the best way of animating them.

Because you are all so special, we have some pre Christmas treats for you all. We have uploaded two new Cletus Clay videos to YouTube and are releasing some shiny new screenshots.

The first is a ‘Making of’ video featuring Anthony Flack talking through the process of getting our clay models into a level of Cletus Clay. Anthony describes how he goes from initial concept sketches to clay model making and all the way through to making the models appear in the level. The footage also includes a stop motion animation of Anthony building one of the models for the game.

The second features some early gameplay footage with Sarah manning the joypad.

The screen shots are taken from footage shown at the Eurogamer Expo this year and show Cletus and Emmet kicking some Alien booty.

Ho ho ho!