Patterson's earliest works in animation were for
Charles Mintz's
Krazy Kat/Screen Gems studio, where he started as an inker in 1929. He remained at Mintz for eleven years. In 1940, he moved to
Walt Disney Productions, where he animated on
Fantasia and
Dumbo, as well as several
Pluto shorts (
Bone Trouble and ''Pluto's Playmate
). By 1942, he mostly worked on Donald Duck shorts such as Donald Gets Drafted''. Patterson left Disney in 1941 during an
animation strike. He would briefly reunite with Screen Gems, now creatively supervised by
Frank Tashlin, before moving to the
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in 1943, with his first short for them being
War Dogs, followed by
Baby Puss, his debut on the
Tom and Jerry series. While he mostly worked in the studio's
Hanna-
Barbera unit, he occasionally provided animation for
Tex Avery's unit in the 1950s (as well as Avery's substitute director
Dick Lundy). He worked on several
Academy Award-winning animation shorts:
Mouse Trouble (1944),
Quiet Please! (1945),
The Little Orphan (1948), and
Johann Mouse (1952). Patterson (along with his colleague
Irven Spence) would briefly leave MGM in the mid 40's. During this period, he would help organize and educate animators from
David Hand's Gaumount British Animation Studio. He and Spence would later move back to MGM in the late 40's. Patterson left MGM permanently in 1953 and was briefly hired by
Walter Lantz. He (alongside former Tex Avery animator Grant Simmons) would direct two shorts,
Broadways Bow Wows and
Dig that Dog. Months afterwards, Patterson and Simmons left
Walter Lantz Productions and co-founded their own studio,
Grantray-Lawrence Animation, which he operated until 1967. GrantRay-Lawrence's early work was providing animation for television commercials, including the original
"Winston Tastes Good" campaign. The company later moved on to producing such animated television series as
Spider-Man and
The Marvel Superheroes. After GrantRay-Lawrence folded in 1967, Patterson joined his former bosses at
Hanna-Barbera, where he worked as a supervising director on several animated television series. Patterson was eventually promoted to vice president in charge of animation direction, a position he held until his retirement in 1993. Patterson was awarded the 1999
Winsor McCay Award by the International Animated Film Society,
ASIFA-Hollywood for his lifetime of contributions to the animation field. == Personal life and death ==