Paint on film, passed on
Norman McLaren saw A Colour Box in 1935 and studied it closely. Drawing and painting straight onto film became the core of his work in Canada.
Lye painted A Colour Box directly onto the film strip, with no camera, and cut it to a Cuban dance record. It was his first hand-painted film to reach a public audience, released by the GPO Film Unit as an advert.
McLaren, still a student in Glasgow, had been experimenting along the same lines. Accounts of his career credit A Colour Box with convincing him to make animation his main work, and the two later worked together for John Grierson at the GPO. At the National Film Board of Canada, McLaren drew Boogie-Doodle straight onto film to a boogie-woogie piano by Albert Ammons.
Documented in histories of animation