Torran Rodgers, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

  Reflective Statement: Collaboration This project was interesting, as its our only group project in the course. However as this is a reflective statement I will be righting about my personal struggles with the Project and not talking about how the group aspect of the project effected me. I think I found the work reasonable and enjoyed most of the work I was doing. I engaged well with preproduction helping with ideation and righting, finishing my work in that department with he animatics. I feel like our project could have been improved if we thought thought about our ideas more and thought about the limitations of the group before coming up with the ideas. Thinking of an animation that didn't require speech or spoken exposition. In production I felt like I did well and initially thought the intention of the sets would come across. however seemingly its intentional appearance didn't work so if I where to do it again I would make the sets obvious in there intentions. This wasn...

  Film Review Submission Post https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-bugs-life-heros-journey-review.html https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2020/11/film-review-lion-king.html https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-martian-3-act-structure.html https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2021/01/megamind-non-linear-narrative.html https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2021/01/guardians-of-galaxy-opposing-characters.html https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2021/01/forbidden-planet-b-list-movies.html https://torranrodgerscaa.blogspot.com/2021/01/mad-max-fury-road-exploitation-cinima.html

  Film Review: Mad Max Fury Road Mad Max Fury Road follows quit a few of the exploitation genres that are popular in exploitation cinema, I will hopefully go through them all and explain how they are shown in the movie. Carsploitation The movie has lots of scene with car chases and weirdly modded vehicles traveling in a convoy. This is a popular type of exploitation cinema appealing to people who are big fans of car and bike culture. Sexploitation The movie focuses around a group of women who are lightly dressed at the start of the movie, who are the wives of one of the rulers in the dystopian society. They are shown as a representation of ethereal beauty dressed in white, however in the narrative they are shown as child-birthing slave. In the majority of Pulp sexploitation movies the female storylines and  motivations are often questionable however in mad max fury road they are seeking freedom from there husband, and not following his orders like in other Sexploitation cinema...

  Film Revie: Attack of the Crab Monsters  attack of the crab monsters has a lot of the stereotypical call signs of a B Movie, however these don't necessarily make the movie hard to watch or not-enjoyable. Use of Stock footage Many shots in Attack of the Crab Monsters are basic shots of the sky, sea and sea life. Weather or not these where stock footage I'm unsure however they could very easily have been if they where not Low Budget Special effects The effects for the crab seem low budget mainly what we see the crab attack one of the cast, you can see little detail or texture on the physical crab arm. Also when shots of miniatures are shown you can see the little detail and care that was taken while making and filming the miniatures for the movie. Limited locations/sets The entire film is seemly filmed along the same stretch of beach front while all indoors scenes take place within the same few buildings, this shows the limited locations B movies can be seen by as well as how ...

  Film Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Within Guardians of the Galaxy there are 2 characters that appear in complete opposition of each other these are Peter Quill and Ronan they don't appear in many scenes together however there characters are completely opposite of each other. Peter is -  - Light-hearted - Positive - Compassionate - Easy going - Dressed in colourful cloths - Reasonable - Acts for he good of people around him - Peter needs people in his life after not having a family growing up Ronan is - - Aggressive - Negative - Un-Emotional - Serious - Dressed in Black - Vengeful - Acts for his own interest - Roman need revenge of the people who he sees are putting restrictions on his species These seem really opposite characters however in the film they aren't dependant on each other as bother of the characters really interact and more of the movie is based around a McGuffin that both the characters are looking to obtain.

  Film Review: Megamind Megamind uses many non-linear narrative devices while telling its story these include Flashbacks, Forth wall Breaks and stream of consciousness. Forth wall break The movie starts with Megamind monologing to the audience about the situation he is in as he's falling to what is assumed to be his death. his monolog is to the audience breaking the 4th wall. Flashback after his monolog he start to describe how he got to earth and the events that transpired to get to this point. meaning most of the movie is actually a flash back. Even within this flashback we are told about past events of another person having yet another flashback of another character.  Stream of consciousness For large segments of the movie the character is speaking in the format of his stream of consciousness. This is one of the storytelling devices of non-linear storytelling. This is most prevent when we catch up to the start of the movie and where with his consciousness as he comes up wit...

  Film Review: The Martian Finding how the Martian sits into the broader idea of a 3 Act structure was fairly easy, as its laid out narratively in 3 very clear acts. However deciding what part of the movies where what in terms of inciting incident, mid point and Climax where harder Distinctions. Exposition The First scenes of the movie are full of exposition showing the cast on mars taking samples and carrying out other various scientific experiments. The Title along with the design of the set shows this to be astronauts on mars and sets up the location for most of the movie going forward. Inciting Incident This would be where the rest of the astronauts leave our main character Mark Watney on mars after presuming him dead in a storm. He instead doesn't die and manages to make it to the relative safety of the space habitat where he stops himself from bleeding to death. Before the audience is told about marks plans on how to stay alive fighting the main problem he faces in the whole ...

  Collaboration Environments After checking my layouts with the rest of my group I added to the environments to make them better. Mainly in terms of the textures and materials.

  Collaboration Animation Ideas At the start of the project we all added to a google doc while discussing potential ideas for our animation. All these ideas stemmed from the sentence, The wrong response to... Skit Ideas  The Wrong Response to Losing a game Getting Fired Getting old The laws of physics Getting stuck on the moon Someone smoking  Movie lines Being (name of character) Authority Being wrong Kindness Emotional trauma Bad news Good news Talking Toys Teachers instructions Being in the wrong place Being thrown into a Movie scenario (getting sucked into it)

  Collaboration Studio Logo Design At the start of the project we created our studio blog. I was responsible for laying out the blog and making it look good. After Alex drew the banner design I took it upon myself to format Alex's spaceman design into a logo that can be used as a square logo or profile icon.  

  Collaboration Final editing Once I Edited the clips together I added the sound from the Collab animatic as well as adding subtitles. Other effects where added to push a visual style leaving us with our outcome.

  Collaboration Film Editing I edited all the clips together into a single film editing each clip individually for timing purpose . A few times I have had moves clips and added seconds hear or there to create better timing in the animation.

  Collaboration editing clips : Motion Blur I received all the clips for editing, however before I edited them together I added motion blur to all the clips individually. Camp fire no blur Camp fire blur Electricity no blur Electricity blur Mayan no blur Mayan blur

  Moom Weightlift Rendered Moom Weightlift W/ Motion Blur

Collab Transition Effect When making the transition I felt that the effective area wasn't being effected by the force the historian was putting on the scene. As such I made improvements to create a better effect. To make the effect better I used replacement animation to  change the shape of the transition as the historian moved across the screen. I chose this method over vertex animation as this would be easier to track when used in moderation. I used 4 shapes to create this effect having them cascade from one to another to create a smooth effect to end my scene and start the next one. After adding motion blur in after effects the swapping out wasn't noticeable and the effect was complete and successful.

Collab Animation For my collaboration project I was given the first scene to animate. A scene depicting cavemen creating fire and its poor outcome. This scene also included the title screen and a interesting transition. I am happy with the animation but I'm sure there are places I would improve it if i re see it with more experience.