In 1940, he moved to the Walt Disney studio, where he animated on Dumbo and Fantasia, as well as several Pluto shorts (Bone Trouble and Pluto's Playmate) and Donald Duck shorts (Donald's Gold Mine, Donald's Tire Trouble, Fall Out-Fall In and The Old Army Game). Patterson left Disney in 1941 during the Disney animators' strike to work at the Metro Goldwyn Mayer cartoon studio, where he was assigned to the Hanna-Barbera unit.