With the success of "Steamboat Willie" and a one-year distribution contract with Pat Powers under his wing, the Disney studios began to grow and consequently the work load began to grow as well. Disney was able to begin hiring new animators, most from New York animation studios which was then still the center of the animation business. Burt Gillett signed on during this year, as did Jack King and Norm Ferguson, strong animators in their own rights. While the earlier animation had exhibited mostly the style of Ub Iwerks, now it began to show differing styles as well.

The year also saw the advent of the "Silly Symphonies" series. While previous shorts had shown a degree of matching between musical rhythm and sound, the music had been subservient to the action. This new series would reverse this and make the animation dependent on the music. Eventually, they found that not only did the animation follow the rhythm, but that it tended to match melody as well.

When the workload became heavier as the year went on, the animators were broken into two units; the first led by Gillett who handled mostly the Micky Mouse shorts; the other led by Iwerks who animated the Silly Symphonies. However as the year went on, tensions began to develop between Disney and Iwerks and Disney and Carl Stalling, both of whom began to get dissatisfied with Disney's rather unorganized additude towards cartoon production. And as the year came to a close, Disney himself was becoming dissatisfied with Pat Powers, who he feared was not accounting correctly for their share of the profits. It was a fear that was to have immense consequences for the Disney Studios in the years to come.