Source: National Archives & Historic Records of United Kingdom
Art • Historical Archive • 🇬🇧 Great Britain • 0 views

Norman McLaren 🇬🇧

Norman McLaren (Known as "Norman McLaren")
Academy Award-Winning Animator, National Film Board Pioneer, Pixilation Inventor
Born 11 April 1914 🇬🇧 Stirling, Great Britain
Passed Away 27 January 1987 Montreal, Canada
Lifespan 72 years old
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Notice / Correction
"Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are drawn."

Archival Overview

Visionary National Film Board animator whose innovations in cameraless animation, graphical sound, and pixilation culminated in the Oscar-winning anti-war masterpiece Neighbours.

Biographical Record

Norman McLaren was one of the most innovative and celebrated animators in world cinematic history. Recruited to the National Film Board of Canada in 1941 by John Grierson, McLaren founded the NFB's legendary animation department in Montreal, pioneering experimental techniques of drawing and scratching directly onto 35mm film emulsions.

His 1952 masterpiece, Neighbours, used his patented "pixilation" technique—animating live actors like stop-motion puppets—to deliver a devastating anti-war parable about two neighbors fighting to the death over a flower, winning an Academy Award. McLaren received the Molson Prize and the Prix Albert-Tessier.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Mount Royal Cemetery
Montreal, Canada
GPS: 45.5050, -73.5950
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