McLaren was born in Stirling, Scotland and studied set design at the Glasgow School of Art. His early experiments with film and animation included actually scratching and painting the film stock itself, as he did not have ready access to a camera. His earliest extant film, Seven Till Five (1933), a "day in the life of an art school" was influenced by Eisenstein and displays a strongly formalist attitude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_McLaren
He would scratch and paint the film himself by hand to create animation without a camera. His work would feature coloured shapes and backgrounds, with elements moving about and interacting. One such peace titled 'Dots' made in 1940 features a solid red background and blue blobs that look like paint drops growing, shrinking and moving around to the music. At times the music is rhythmic but it also becomes chaotic and not in a set pattern. The music sounds electronic, with beeps and squeaks.
In contrast, his other work features rock and roll (Boogie Doodle, 1948, although the title sequence for the film uses the same electronic sounds. Begone dull care in 1949 even has music that sounds like Jazz. The common theme between these is the handmade effects of shapes and colour moving about and interacting.
This idea of shapes moving with colour is a good basis for the ideas that my animations can be built on.
Examples:
Dots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3-vsKwQ0Cg
Spook Sport: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnLJqJBVCT4
Boogie Doodle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgJ-yOhpYIM
Begone Dull Care: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svD0CWVjYRY
Synchromy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiJR1ET715M