Page "Fantasia (film)" Paragraph 24

Disney had been interested in producing abstract animation since he saw A Color Box by Len Lye from 1935.

He explained the work done in the Toccata and Fugue was " no sudden idea ... they were something we had nursed along several years but we never had a chance to try ".

Preliminary designs included those from effects animator Cy Young, who produced drawings influenced by the patterns on the edge of a piece of sound film.

In late 1938 Disney hired Oskar Fischinger, a German artist who had produced numerous abstract animated films, including some with classical music, to work with Young.

Upon review of three leica reels produced by the two, Disney rejected all three.

According to Huemer all Fishinger " did was little triangles and designs ... it didn't come off at all.

Too dinky, Walt said.

" Fischinger, like Disney, was used to having full control over his work and was not used to working in a group.

Feeling his designs were too abstract for a mass audience, Fishinger left the studio in apparent despair, before the segment was completed, in October 1939.

Disney had plans to make the Toccata and Fugue an experimental three-dimensional film, with audiences being given cardboard stereoscopic frames with their souvenir programs, but this idea was abandoned.