Nursery Rhymes

Ring o Rosies

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

As far as I remember, from what i've heard I thought this was about the Black Plague, which is a really depressing thing to think about when you consider we sang this as kids and it's likely about plague and people dying because of the useless methods they used to try and keep themselves safe.

Of course this may not be the case, it may just be gibberish that has been interpreted as meaningful by overzealous scholars, but it's hard to ignore the similarities.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

This is different, I've consistently thought that this is just about an egg falling off the wall, but looking at it it's likely a reference to a monarchy or a battle, the fact that all the king's horses and all the king's men are mentioned puts the idea across that Humpty was the king who fell (literally or figuratively) and was unable to reclaim his former position, being that he either died or his kingdom collapsed and could not return to its prior glory.

I'm really not sure why Humpty was shown as an egg, perhaps it was the best way to represent something difficult to put back together once smashed, and the nonsense of it appealed to children.
  
 Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey,
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Some claim this is about Mary, Queen of Scots and her aversion to religious reform, the simplified meaning is a lot like this, someone sitting comfortably in there position when a sudden change comes along and upsets the established order, causing a sudden reaction, this meaning has been adapted a lot into a whole range of stories though I doubt ms muffet was the source.



Jack and Jill
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

Jack and Jill is often regarded as another nonsense poem since it mentions going to the top of a hill to get water from a well. Likely it's a metaphor for futile search and inevitable collapse (and the resulting collapse of others that follows). It's been theorised that Jack and Jill represents Norse mythology, which is entirely possible, the rhyme seems to have been used as far back as the 16th century, in Elizabethan court and Shakespeare, which lends to the belief that the rhyme was quite well known at this point as it's being used in what could be considered olden "pop culture".

Oranges and Lemons

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.
You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.

I'll admit i've never actually heard of this one, but apparently it's one of the most well known and refers to the sound of the bells of different churches in England. The nursery rhyme is said to have its roots in death and executions which is a strangely prominent topic for nursery rhymes, the longer oranges and lemons mentions:

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
Chop chop chop chop
The last man's dead!

Which is very creepy, there's not even a subtle notion towards execution rather a blatent example.

Animation

Animation Styles

Rotoscoping

Likely the most prominent example of rotoscoping recently is the movie A Scanner Darkly.

Rotoscoping involves filming a live action scene then animating over the scene by hand, since it's a real scene being depicted, it creates a much more realistic scene than animating by scratch.


Stop Motion

Stop motion involves the use of real-life models, which can be puppets, clay figures or any number of things, then by photographing, manipulating and rephotographing the models, which when put together in a sequence creates the illusion of movement.

I grew up watching things like Wallace and Gromit, and was unaware at a young age that stop motion was the key to how these things were moving.

Stop motion gives a sense of animation that can't be (completely) replicated by a computer, which is why a lot of directors choose to use it instead of CGI, movies like Coraline and Fantastic Mr Fox were made using stop motion, while watching you really appreciate the hours that have gone into the work that's on screen and I think in a lot of ways that's part of the magic of stop motion animation.

Frame by Frame

Traditionally, animation large scale was produced frame by frame, using cels, which were layered over hundreds of times and photographed to produce animation. This style has been nearly entirely replaced by computer animation of the cels, which allows for not only a faster production speed, but excessively more control over the animation and graphics of the scene.

Frame by frame is responsible for the majority of animation regarded as 'classics', but it was during the 90s that major studios began to incorporate computers into standard cel animation. Classic manual cel animation has largely been replaced by digital cel creation, which allows for CGI effects, but as with stop motion, people believe that manual animation gives a kind of magic to an animation that can't be replicated. The movie Redline was all hand drawn, utilising over 100,000 frames and seven years of work for the production team.

Anime especially is a major source for this kind of animation. Anime's style and variety rivals that of tradition real-life film, to the point where it's spread far beyond Japan and has become a major player in the western market (though not as much as a lot of people should like).

Computer-generated and computer based animation

The true king, the all-powerful, versatile, increasingly accessible, devilishly handsome and spectacularly fast growing industry of computer animation has become the go-to style for movies, anime, special effects, titles, it's allowed for a 3D style of movie making that could not have existed prior, it's allowed for scenes in movies that would be considered impossible not forty years ago to be produced, and what's better, the capabilities and realism of these animations is consistently growing and reaching the point where real life and CGI will be unable to be told apart.

3D animation is usually produced by creating a 3d model in a computer program, giving it a structure and ways of movement then animating it using keyframes to show it moving through an environment. For 2D animation, the same thing occurs but without a 3D model, instead using a 2d element which can be either manipulated or replaced frame by frame to show movement.


Computer graphics is controversial in some ways, being that it can replicate other forms of animation, the movie Flushed Away is a good example of this. It's interesting to look at how computer animation has evolved, for example, take the Dire Straits video Money for Nothing

This was one of the first videos to use human-style 3DCG models and was considered groundbreaking when released. Compare this to how animation has evolved to a point where they're being made to look unrealistic because audiences will be averse to something that looks overly real (Pixar's Up is one of my favourites in recent years)

Bear in mind this animation is nearly four years old, CGI has advanced even further since then.