Year 9 2008 (continued)

Let's begin by talking a little about SAW and how it relates to games. The core of the SAW franchise (at least at the beginning) is that it is all a game! Jigsaw, the villain, even refers to all of his endeavors as a game for those trapped within them. He develops these mechanically genius devices of torture as well as fiendishly clever mazes and booby trapped locations with puzzles and the whole 9 yards. Sounds like a video game to me! So, while I was turned off by the gore and the self-mutilation and torture, the "game" itself was something that I thought could make for a really interesting video game experience.

I was just an artist, though, so it really wasn't up to me! When I began working on SAW: The Game, I was simply developing props. My very first prop was a girder to be used on underground walls as supports.... nothing too exciting. My next prop was the tape recorder/player that has featured prominently in the films and it was a model I was rather proud of.

Coming off of Garden Defense and iWin's casual games as well as porting PS2 games to the PSP before at Buzz Monkey, I found I was a bit out of practice when it came to actually creating modern art assets! But I did get up to speed soon enough.

Not too long into development, the assignment of creating the first "trap" came to me. The traps, in the SAW franchise, are a pretty crucial component of the whole enchilada that is SAW, so it was a pretty cool distinction that I'd be able to make one. I was brought in on meetings and so forth about what the traps should be, how they should be done, etc. It became pretty obvious to me that this was going to be tricky. It seemed to me that there was no real consensus about how these traps should be handled, what the gameplay would be, and so on. As a lowly artist and not a designer or director, I stayed out of it mostly and tried to do what I was told. The result was a "back-breaker" table that a victim would be strapped to. Chains would be pulling the different components of the trap and the player would have to manipulate some sort of gear shifter contraption to somehow stop the trap from killing its victim.

To be honest, the end result of this trap was awful. Even my artwork was mediocre at best due to the very vague direction the design of the trap had. It was decided to put that trap on the backburner and for me to move on to something else while the designer worked out the kinks. My art director at the time thought I had done a pretty good job though, so he handed me the task of making the Reverse Bear Trap. The RBT was a very iconic trap from the SAW series. If you look up SAW, more then likely you'll find this trap. It was a helmet with large hinged teeth that would split a person's head in half when triggered. They had actually already gotten a model done by an artist they hired earlier but that artist literally quit after one day (his old studio offered him his job back with a raise... can't blame him!) so I got his left overs. I finished it up and they liked it. So that was good. But I wasn't very happy with it. I hoped to one day get another crack at it if time permitted.

Over the next couple months, I became the "trap guy" on the art team. Anything related to traps or puzzles or mini-games, I got the art assignment. I'll be honest, I think that's pretty cool! I'm not a big SAW fan, but if you're making art for a SAW game, doing the traps and puzzles is the meat of the art, in my opinion!

Next: My opinion gets me in hot water!