Norman McLaren Quotations

Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn.

I have tried to preserve in my relationship to the film the same closeness and intimacy that exists between a painter and his canvas.

In any art movement, the art has to move into a new phase - a filmmaker has a desire to make a film that is not like a previous film.

I like black and white films. I don't exactly know why - probably because there is a stylization which is removed from actual life, unlike a color film.

Well rounded forms gives smooth sounds; sharper or angular forms give harder and harsher sounds.

The number of strokes to the inch controls the pitch of the note: the more, the higher the pitch; the fewer, the lower the pitch, the size of the stroke controls the loudness... the tone quality is the most difficult element to control, it is made by the shape of the strokes.

The good moral work of art should have all the qualities that a good amoral work of art should have, such as formal unity, balance, contrast, and a sensitivity to the material out of which it is made.

By drawing or exposing two or more patterns on the same bit of film I can create harmony and textual effects.

So people will come along and do new things and sometimes return to the spirit of an earlier age.

Unless it's done superbly, as in the Japanese film Gate of Hell, color can be a very distracting element.

Film is changing, and it can't help but keep changing.

The process of art evolving is always one which has fascinated me.

But it has, in addition, an even more precious quality - a consciousness of the human intelligence, the human spirit and that man is a social creature.

And so my militant philosophy is this: to make with a brush on canvas is a simple direct delight-to make with the movie is the same.

Take a film of Jacques Tati like Mon Oncle which has something quite new - for me, unique - in it.

I don't know whether it ever comes back to the same thing; it does return to the spirit of a previous period in some way, but it's different, it's new.

If I find a film dull, I find it infinitely more entertaining to watch the scratches.

Animation is manipulating the difference.