Most of the animation of the tiger was handled by Disney animator Milt Kahl. Kahl was usually assigned the more difficult "straight" characters (e.g., realistic human characters, like the various fairy tale princes), and some of the other animators teased him about not being able to handle the broader, cartoonier characters. Kahl took this as a challenge, and once others saw his work on the film, the teasing stopped. Later, Kahl animated two other tiger characters: Tigger in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) and Shere Kahn in The Jungle Book (1967).
Walt Disney instructed Jack Kinney to try and get rid of the tiger's stripes because they were a tedious process and there was the likelihood they would waver. Kinney came up with the idea for Goofy's elephant to fall on the tiger and flatten him, somehow causing the stripes to get stuck on the elephant's backside, leaving the tiger to cover his now-stripeless body as if naked. When Walt saw the scene, he remarked, "Well, you got rid of the stripes... in the last scene."