10 Fascinating Facts About Disney's Pinocchio

When it comes to comparing the animation between this film and Snow White, Pinocchio pushed its team much harder than the previous feature. Not only was the character design paramount, but special effects for traditionally animated films, e.g. moving carts, magic, clocks, weather etc. had never been done before on such a scale.

Fantasy elements like “fairy dust” was a completely alien concept when it came to animation at that point. Sure, Disney always had moving trees and dancing mice in their features but portraying actual magic was something that they’d never attempted in previous films. To bring these effects to life, Disney hired Oskar Fischinger, an abstract animator who was also working on Fantasia at the time, to animate the magic particles for the Blue Fairy.

For vehicles like the horse-drawn carriages, the crew built working models and animated over the footage they shot of them. The same technique was used for Geppetto’s cuckoo clocks, with working clocks being build specifically for the film.

It’s longest lasting legacy was the water effects. Everything from splashes, to rain, to the underwater details. The animators worked for a whole year to make the most convincing water they could possibly create for the film. Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas were proud of their work in creating the ground-breaking effects, even almost 50 years later when animators for The Little Mermaid looked to Pinocchio’s animation team for advice.