Press
Tuna Secures Contract With Channel 4
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 | Press | 3 Comments
Sheffield-based independent game production company Tuna has signed a contract with Channel 4 Education to produce their new project Cover Girl (working title), a game that explores the world of magazine and advertising airbrushing and photo manipulation – and ultimately, consumer self-esteem.
Cover Girl is being created as part of Channel 4 Education’s strategy to connect with its audience through their favourite digital mediums.
Cover Girl allows players to take on the role of a desk artist in a publishing house. Via challenging tasks and tests of skill, players will “enhance” the photographs that will adorn the publishing house’s fashion magazines. As the game progresses, the player will begin to understand the methods that magazines employ to sell units and the methods that advertisers employ to sell beauty products.
Andrew Crawshaw, Creative Director at Tuna, says:
“There is a wealth of opportunities out there for independent game developers to flex their creative muscles without working for traditional publishers. Working with Channel 4 gives us an excellent opportunity to innovate and create something daring like Cover Girl”.
Alice Taylor, Commissioning Editor for Channel 4, says:
“Beauty is a terrible thing: an enormous industry, a fleeting thing to have (if we have it at all) and nowadays, mostly an unnatural product of digital manipulation. The daily visual barrage of sculpted abs, cow-length eyelashes, unnaturally long thighbones, skin without follicles: what is it doing to the nation’s self image, we ask ourselves?
COVER GIRL (working title) aims to help our teenagers understand that media and images are manipulated, designed, and very carefully. Armed with this knowledge, the next photograph of a wrinkle-free 44 year old might not seem quite so normal after all.
Channel 4 Education is very pleased to be working with Tuna Technologies, who have a reputation for both hard work and exciting creative techniques.”
Download full press release here.
Screen Yorkshire Invest in Cletus Clay
Monday, September 7th, 2009 | Press | No Comments
REGIONAL INVESTMENT SECURES FOUNDATIONS FOR CLETUS CLAY
Sheffield-based independent games developer Tuna is the latest Game Republic member to benefit from Screen Yorkshire’s Business Investment Fund, as they announced an investment of £30,000 towards the creation of their new award-nominated title, Cletus Clay(tm).
Cletus Clay(tm) is a videogame made entirely out of clay, using traditional stop frame animation, just like Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit (but with added shotguns and aliens). Tuna has set up a development blog at www.cletusclay.com to document how the game is being made. Following its nomination for the Excellence in Visual Arts award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival in San Francisco, Cletus Clay(tm) will also be featured at the Eurogamer Expo IndieCade 2009 this autumn.
Alex Amsel, Managing Director of Tuna, says:
”As a Sheffield-based company, it’s great that we can be supported locally by organisations such as Screen Yorkshire and Game Republic. With their help Yorkshire has become a fantastic region for the games industry to grow and evolve. We’re really looking forward to showing off Cletus Clay(tm) at the Eurogamer Expo in Leeds.”
Jamie Sefton, Game Republic Sector Manager at Screen Yorkshire, says:
“As well as being an industry-led games network for the region, the backing of Screen Yorkshire enables Game Republic members to access their business investment funds, giving us an opportunity to really make a difference here. We feel that Tuna’s amazing Cletus Clay(tm) has the potential to be one of the indie scene’s strongest titles.”
Screen Yorkshire and Game Republic are also bringing the Eurogamer Expo to Leeds in October to ensure thousands of Yorkshire’s video game enthusiasts get their hands on new titles from developers such as EA, Sega, Konami and of course Tuna, before their release.
The Eurogamer Expo runs from October 27th to the 28th in Leeds and from October 30th to the 31st in London. For more information on the Eurogamer Expo 2009 or to buy tickets, go to http://expo.eurogamer.net/.
Tuna
Award nominated Tuna are an independent game production company who have worked on over 70 released titles. Tuna’s focus is on developing interesting concepts and collaborating with talented partners to create unique projects. With over 13 years experience working on a wide range of platforms including home console, mobile, and the web, Tuna are specialists in nurturing novel ideas suited to cross platform development.
Game Republic and Screen Yorkshire
Game Republic, the trade association for the games sector in Yorkshire and Humber, promotes and provides support to the industry through a range of initiatives, investing in games projects, creating better links with academia, developing relationships with international publishers and championing collaboration through hosting regular networking events. In 2007 Game Republic was fully integrated into Screen Yorkshire enabling the games sector in the region to access its strategic investment funds. www.gamerepublic.org
Screen Yorkshire is the regional screen agency, responsible for inspiring, promoting and supporting a successful and sustainable film, broadcast, games and interactive media sector in Yorkshire and Humber. In May 2006 Screen Yorkshire was awarded £10.2m by Regional Development Agency Yorkshire Forward to deliver its Digital Media Content Programme. This ambitious and progressive four-year programme is aimed at creating nearly a thousand jobs, attracting over £50 million of inward investment and helping businesses to compete in a fast-changing global marketplace.
www.screenyorkshire.co.uk
Cletus Clay - Entirely Created in Clay!
Friday, November 21st, 2008 | Games news, Press | No Comments
Cletus Clay
A rootin’, tootin’ platform brawler created and animated entirely in clay coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade® and PC in 2009
SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND – November 21 2008 – Independent UK developer Tuna are excited to announce Cletus ClayTM, a manic side-scrolling platform brawler headed your way on Xbox LIVE® Arcade and PC. Released under Tuna’s new label TunaSnax, the Xbox LIVE Arcade version will be self-published.
Based on an original concept by acclaimed animator Anthony Flack, Cletus ClayTM is a fast paced old-school run’n'gun with eye catching visuals and a seriously irreverent attitude. Playing as the eponymous Cletus, a bad-tempered, wise-cracking, gun-totin’ hick, you take on a bunch of uninvited alien visitors who have had the temerity to trespass through your farmland on their way to conquering the Earth. Cue flying saucers, ray guns, seemingly endless reinforcements, giant robots and motherships galore; but nothing is a match for an angry redneck and his pitchfork!
Created entirely from clay, the world of Cletus ClayTM is a fusion of traditional model making, stop-motion animation and modern digital technology. Virtually every object in the game has been modeled, photographed and animated using similar techniques to those used on productions such as Wallace and Gromit (Aardman Studios).
So, grab your shootin’ iron and blast, punch, kick, and smash your way across 12 memorable levels in a quest to rid the Earth of them there boggle-eyed cow rustling invaders. Because nothing says ‘Welcome to Earth’ quite like a good old home cooked helping of whup ass!
KEY FEATURES:
- The whole game is made out of clay and presented in HD: you can even see the thumb prints on the models!
- Two player cooperative gameplay: a second player can join in as Cletus’ brother Emmett so the dynamic duo can beat up the marauding alien invaders as a team.
- A multitude of mini-games and bonus stages, including: blasting alien saucers out of the sky with a mounted cannon, rescuing sheep from a flooding valley, frantic egg gathering from chicken coops, exploring caves for hidden treasure and hunting down fleeing aliens in a hijacked flying saucer.
- Cletus has access to an impressive arsenal of weapons to lay down the pain, including: pitchforks, shotguns, dynamite, mini-guns, flame throwers, grenade launchers and alien ray guns. But, given half a chance, he’s just as likely to make use of a sturdy plank, a hay bale or even a pig!
There is a dedicated Cletus Clay blog at http://www.cletusclay.com
Assets are available for download here.
About Tuna
Established in 1996, independent developer Tuna create entertainment software across a wide range of platforms including console, PC and hand-held devices. Tuna handle both original and licensed properties, with an increasing focus on innovative and original content. Tuna manage their own independent games portal TunaSnax, where they also blog the life of an indie developer.
For more information please visit http://www.tunasnax.com
Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
NOTE: This post been edited following the administration of Pinnacle Entertainment.
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