Born in Stirling, Scotland, he began making amateur short films at 19 while attending the Glasgow School of Art and at 21 turned out his first animated film. John Grierson saw his work at an amateur film festival and invited him to join his General Post Office Film Unit in London in 1936. While there, he worked on live-action documentaries and made his first professional animated film, LOVE ON THE WING (1938). In 1939 McLaren emigrated to the US, where he continued making animated films by his favorite method -- drawing directly on celluloid. In 1941 he was invited by Grierson to join the newly formed National Film Board, in Ottawa, Canada, and in 1943 he was put in charge of the Board's animation unit. Enjoying complete creative freedom and a generous Canadian government grant, McLaren created numerous cartoons, many of them abstract, by a variety of techniques and in various styles. He gained wide recognition as one of the world's leading animators. A gifted innovator and a meticulous craftsman, McLaren pioneered in many areas of animation, but his greatest contribution was in developing and perfecting the techniques of drawing directly on film, a cameraless method of animation originated by Len Lye. McLaren also experimented with three-dimensional animation and the conversion of animated drawings into synthetic sound waves. He won an Oscar® for his cartoon NEIGHBOURS (1952), in which he animated living actors, changing their positions 24 times a second as if they were inanimate objects to achieve robot-like human motion, a process known as pixillation. He also won many other international awards during his illustrious career. Visit the Internet Movie Database for a listing of McLaren's extensive credits.  Documentary (Short Subjects) 1952: NEIGHBOURS - Producer  Nominated for Short Subjects (One-reel) 1952: NEIGHBOURS - Producer  Nominated for Short Subjects (Live Action Subjects) 1957: A CHAIRY TALE - Producer 3 nominations, 1 Award