Norman McLaren's Animation

Norman McLaren was a Scottish-born animator and has done most of his work for the National Film Board of Canada. His films notably won awards at BAFTA, the Oscars, and the Berlin International Film Festivals. He mainly used techniques such as Direct animation (drawn-on-film), drawn sound, and pixilation, which means he created most of his films by directly working on the film stock, by scratching it, painting it and drawing on it, creating both the images and the sounds analogically.

I find his work so interesting because he was one of the pioneers in combining music with animation,  and his technique is really great. The technology has advanced a lot since his time but it's still interesting to compare his work with the work of today's artists and notice how it is less about the tools you use and mainly about what idea you have and the way you communicate it.

Here are some of his most famous Drawn-on-film animations, and below there's a video explaining his drawn-sound technique.