the SAW postmortem (Patreon)

hope you all had a happy halloween! if nothing else, it's a month that really brings out the psycho weird ambitious artist in me - hence the big project i put together for this october/november. this was a bit more elaborate than usual, so here's a full breakdown of this thing from top to bottom for you guys. we'll be extensively covering the pre-production, production, and post-production in a mostly-linear order, alongside listing out the software, hardware and props used to create pretty much everything you saw across the storyline.

PRE-PRODUCTION

unfinished environment from the original concept

originally the plan was to do something totally unrelated to what we ended up with, that wouldve utilized some 3d stuff in blender etc etc - if you recall i mentioned having some tablet issues at the time which, whilst i managed to resolve fairly quickly, made enough a time impact to shelve that idea for a later date. i won't elaborate on it in the here and now, but this final project did end up having a cheeky little blatant homage to that going on.

i actually got around to watching the SAW movies for the first time this month (specifically 1 and 2 because the rest werent on netflix), and definitely at least a little inspired from this one jerma bit, i figured itd make for a fun theme this year. after a bit of brainstorming with the idea, i came up with a whole little plotline i liked a lot, and the concept quickly moved into proper planning territory.

i wanted to give jigsaw a very silly and out of character un-serious motivation for his game, which originally was going to involve something like making a fake twitter account, and having him threaten the audience (you guys) to follow him for entirely clout-motivated reasons. there wouldve been at least one ramble in there about him doing follow4follow or some shit, but ultimately i decided to break the 4th wall a bit to make for a game that would directly provide something for you guys. thus, the idea of a jigsaw who was literally just a very disgruntled zelink fan and was really wanting to see more of that was born.

i wrote out a simple script, which i've attached as a .pdf, and had a friend who can do the john kramer jigsaw voice get a good few takes. we wanted something that was relatively to the point, snappy, and easy to understand, given the levels of voice modulation required to give that serial-killer voice vibe. whilst i thought itd be funny enough in its own right to have pear and maple in actual mortal peril, the idea of what is in essence a totally harmless trap - and one that would still provoke a reaction out of pear specifically in spite of that, won out in the end. with the idea more or less ironed out, we moved onto actually getting a headstart on production.

PRODUCTION

WIP version of the scare

the idea to actually show pear and maple being snatched was born about halfway through the pre-production stage, with originally the concept just going to start with the "i wanna play a game" video. i didnt know if id have time to actually animate a preceding section - but i also figured if i needed to cut back - i could just use hot girls in ghostface masks as this years thematic piece and leave it at that. it ended up working out that the threat video was actually pretty much good to go ahead of the ghostface animation being completed, so i was pretty confident in joining them all together.

left, still from SAW. right, still from spooky surprise animation.

the actual framing of the scare itself is also a direct reference to a similar scene in that first SAW movie, right down to pretty frame-accurate reconstructions of how said scare was implemented. drawing pigface was a little out of my wheelhouse but made for a fun challenge, and i was really happy with how the final result came out. i experimented with animating the character at a higher framerate, but ultimately found it just a bit too incomprehensible, so i stuck with my regular 4 frames per slide style.

jigsaws' drawing :). sometimes it can take a surprising amount of effort to make a "bad" drawing but this took exactly as much time as it looked like it did lol.

arguably the most difficult part of this whole project was that jigsaw video, but solving all the hurdles it threw up was also some of the most fun i actually had, and the final result came out pretty much exactly as i imagined. i really wanted to properly emulate the handmade, snuff-footage type style of the video tapes seen in the actual SAW movies - and the intro of SAW II (gore warning) was a particular point of reference.

Unused Billy Frame

originally, billy (the puppet), was entirely hand drawn by myself. I found this a workable enough style that i probably could've spent longer refining, but after doing a bit of browsing, i figured the both the easiest and actually best way to go about accurately mimicking a puppet being mimed and recorded would be to literally just do that.

i promise you this was not sponsored.

this knockerheads bobblehead was used as the main prop for billy. the head sculpt in particular i thought was really high quality, but unfortunately the mouth piece, despite seemingly being a seperate piece of resin, was glued in there pretty tight. it took some (literal) blood, sweat and tears, but we got the mouth piece out with some craft knives, and i used some sharpies + felt tip pens to re-color some of the areas of paint that had been chipped away in the process.

the intro shot with no bells and whistles, you can see billys' mouth is slightly discolored, which is the areas where the paint had chipped away from sawing (haha) his mouth off.

it was then just a process of puppeteering billy to be relatively in-sync with the dialog. for the most part this was very easy to do owing to the mouth being one simple point of articulation.  we went about securing an appropriately dark and industrial looking place to shoot in that may or may not have just been our garage. billy himself was lit simply with a phone torch, and later just a bright phone screen to make for even less light, and i generously had a friend help out actually filming him. we used a Sony DSC RX100M5 camera for both this recording session, and later recording the CRT monitor again.

Unused CRT frame

and speaking of, originally the TV was just going to be a 2d hand-drawn frame, but i wasn't super convinced i'd be able to emulate an authentic handheld feeling from this arrangement - so we settled on just using an actual, real CRT televison to achieve the effect we were shooting for. the specific model is a 14-inch Panasonic TC-14JR1.

early CRT test

in order to actually be able to relatively easily transfer test footage to and from the display, a PS3 was used as the media hub of choice, and is the machine the final render would end up running off.

the full pear/maple shot. a bigger frame was used for this shot to allow for the camera to move about in post.

while a big chunk of the final video is a lot of real actual footage and props, elements like the appearance of pear and maple and pigface were entirely animated in Clip Studio Paint EX. i didn't go crazy detailing these parts as i knew some of it would get lost in translation by the time you viewed the final product, and its in parts like this where sticking to a blue-hue color scheme really saved a lot of time. the hyper-detailed closeup of pigfaces' UGLY, WRINKLED hand was a direct homage to similar hyper-detail grossout shots you'd see in old episodes of Spongebob.

the pigface animation. in contrast to their earlier appearance, i wanted them to have a docile, almost cute look to them, furthering the absurdity of the situation.

even the timer was made in Clip Studio, using an alarm clock font, and was originally only 24 hours, which wouldve been more thematically appropriate but also have given me literally half the amount of time i had to cook up a properly good link/zelda piece, thus 48 hours became the final time. the only part that wasn't directly filmed or animated was some footage of my twitter feed that was recorded directly off my monitor using OBS. i hadnt actually checked up until recording that part but was pleasantly surprised to see it had in fact been a good few months since id drawn any zelink art - the joke wouldnt have really worked if id been serving them up on the regular.

the timer animation, complete with some intentional breakup frames.

POST PRODUCTION

screenshot of the edit file for the scare.

Both the jumpscare animation and the jigsaw threat video were compiled in Vegas Pro 14, which is the editing program of choice I use whenever I do more elaborate work like this. when animating, i try to get as much done directly in art programs like Clip Studio, so for the jumpscare video, the main focus of the editing process was creating an appropriate sound collage to spook you all >:).

the clothes sound were handmade, whilst these ambient samples to create the basic soundscape, and this camera fall sound and lightning crash sound being used in the actual jumpscare, alongside additional samples that were pulled directly from the SAW jumpscare i was already referencing, and a little bit of the end of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (spoilers).

doubled up takes in audacity.

for the jigsaw voice itself, we took the existing recordings of the script (recorded with an AT2020USB mic), duplicated them, and pitched one down about -12% in Audacity. elements like the actual distortion and filtering were added through FX chains in Vegas Pro. thanks again to Opalu who came onboard very last minute, and did an excellent job giving Pear and Maples' voices, for lack of a better term, the appropriate level of uh, muffled.

screenshot of the fx chain used to create the "jigsaw voice"

the jigsaw video was a much more elaborate edit process. i think its a common misconception that footage recorded on a CRT television is inherently lower-quality when thats not really the case, its more a result of being paired with things like early video game consoles, vhs tapes and live broadcasts. all that is to say, even with a proper CRT unit on hand, a number of post-processing effects were applied to the edited footage to give it that proper snuff-film, serial killer vibe.

before and after the vfx chain is applied

once the jigsaw video was actually completed, we then had to go about re-recording that on the actual CRT to really bring things full circle. up until now i hadn't properly sat down in the dark and attempted to record the monitor straight on, and if you weren't already aware, recording a CRT monitor can lead to a number of playback issues. another huge shoutout to modern vintage gamer for putting together this video that not only explains the issue better than i can, but also provided a solution that i went about using ASAP. luckily, the camera i was using had the ability to adjust the shutter speed, and bringing it down to around 25 or so resulted in the really clean final footage.

very elaborate setup.

at that point it was just a process of getting some clean takes in of the full video from start to finish. again playing into that serial killer vibe, i didnt want to film on a tripod so things looked too "professional". this footage was then put back into Vegas Pro for a final composite and pass, where I tweaked minor elements of the captured video. the end result is honestly pretty much identical to what i'd pictured and im again very happy with how it turned out!

early zelda wip

lastly, to quickly actually talk about the big payoff, the link/zelda piece was intentionally framed as the first 100% explicit post ive made public, as was the uh, "terms" jigsaw laid out. this kind of unintentionally put a decent bit more pressure on me than usual to, for lack of a better term - cook. the blowjob scenario went from imagination to fully realized in the span of some 50 or so hours, not counting all the time spent sleeping and eating.

it was by design intented to be this last part that could pretty much stand on its own, i just needed to make it be actually decent for the uh, "joke" to really land. i was really lucky to stumble upon an idea that came together super clearly in my head, and i hope you guys enjoyed the final result of this bizarre game. i cannot promise i wont do something as weird next year, but it will definitely be different either way. regardless, i hope this long-ass post gave you some insight into the creative process for all this!

and im sure maple and pear are doing just fine right now, anyways.

HARDWARE LIST

- Billy the Puppet Knockerheads Bobblehead Prop

- Sculpting Knives

- Some pens and sharpies

- Panasonic TC-14JR1 CRT Television

- Playstation 3

- USB thumbstick

- Sony DSC RX100M5 Camera

- AT2020USB Microphone

SOFTWARE LIST

- Clip Studio Paint EX

- Vegas Pro 14

- Audacity

- OBS