How Draw Peanut Characters Christmas Charlie Brown

Welcome! We're here with another edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter. And these are our topics today:

1 — a look inside the animation of A Charlie Chocolate-brown Christmas.
Two — blitheness news from effectually the globe.
3 — highlighting Barber Westchester and The Summit of the Gods.
Four — the concluding word.

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That'south out of the style — let's become!

one. "I think we've ruined Charlie Dark-brown"

A Charlie Brownish Christmas deserves its reputation. It's non just a bang-up Christmas special — information technology's the greatest Christmas special. The testify is tender, funny and meaningful in all the correct ways. Although information technology first aired in 1965, the whole matter feels timeless.

We're all so close to A Charlie Brownish Christmas, though, that it's piece of cake to miss its qualities equally a work of animation. Information technology didn't appear out of thin air, fully formed — the magic was crafted by human hands. Seeing Charles Schulz'southward characters in motion may feel natural now, just figuring out how to animate them was a challenge that the team almost didn't overcome.

"When we saw the finished show," recalled manager Neb Melendez, "we thought we had killed information technology."one

Bill Littlejohn, an animator on the special, once said, "The Peanuts characters were not designed for animation." Schulz hadn't broken them down into easy-to-draw shapes. They were idiosyncratic designs, unique to him. Animator Dale Baer, a Disney legend from projects like The Panthera leo King, put it similar this:

Nosotros sit here and draw Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and characters similar that with no trouble, merely to depict Schulz'south characters took a talent unto itself. Many people wouldn't say that, just just let them sit down and try to draw those guys, and they'll observe out. You feel similar you lot can't depict worth a darn when you lot work on those characters.

At that place was another problem, also. A Charlie Brown Christmas was animated in four months, and was allotted a tiny budget of $76,000 (around $660,000 today). The budget was and then minor that the team went $20,000 over that corporeality — and still had less than one-half the coin of the first animated Christmas special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, from 1962.

Storyboards for *A Charlie Brown Christmas* (courtesy of the book *A Charlie Chocolate-brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition*)

The quest to animate Peanuts properly had started several years earlier. Bill Melendez, born José Cuauhtémoc Melendez, was the chief strength behind it.

Schulz starting time allowed Peanuts to be animated in promotions for Ford, starting effectually 1960. Melendez directed these, too. His designer Sterling Sturtevant, known as "the most prolific female person character designer" of her era and hailed for "setting the commercial standard for the times," worked alongside Schulz to figure out the look.

That early Peanuts blitheness (like this slice animated by Bobe Cannon and co-designed by Sturtevant) made primal discoveries about how to move Schulz'south characters. The artists leaned on their past work at UPA, and on the express blitheness techniques they'd pioneered there. Melendez, a pinnacle UPA animator, recalled some of his earliest attempts to make Peanuts blitheness click:

A normal human being might walk fast on twelve frames, and normally at about sixteen frames for each footfall. Only if y'all have these characters walk on sixteens, they're going to be floating. I fabricated several experiments, and these kids, because of their size, take to walk on sixes: every six frames is a pace.

They were getting closer to A Charlie Brownish Christmas, but at that place was still more than to learn. Considering of the Ford job, Melendez and his team were hired to animate the Peanuts characters for a 1963 documentary about Schulz'due south piece of work (see it hither). This animation gets even closer to the comic's look.

By this bespeak, one matter'south clear — the animators had solved turning the characters. This was a problem early on on. Neb Littlejohn once noted that Charlie Brown'south head is "a different shape at every angle, with that little glob of hair on his forehead irresolute completely from front view to profile." That made him hard to plough. Littlejohn said that they eventually "figured out how to start a turn and and then zap to the final position."

Melendez and Schulz had congenital a rapport, just none of their work together had led to a total-fledged Peanuts cartoon yet. That opportunity came presently afterward — when the documentary's producer, Lee Mendelson, received a call. Coca-Cola wanted to sponsor a Peanuts Christmas special.

Layouts for *A Charlie Brown Christmas* (courtesy of *The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation*)

"At that fourth dimension, specials were ever ane hr," Melendez recalled. "They wanted me to exercise a one-hour show in about iv months. I said, 'Y'all can't do it.' "

With CBS signed on as the broadcaster, A Charlie Brown Christmas became a half-60 minutes special. Melendez said that a four-month schedule was "okay" given the length, but the process was nonetheless a rush. The thing was that Melendez had never directed a special earlier — he didn't fifty-fifty know how to budget one, and he undercharged CBS.

Blithe commercials tended to be expensive, and, combined with their length, that allow artists put in intendance and time that standard cartoons didn't allow. Dropped into the wringer of primetime Boob tube production, Melendez and his team weren't able to polish their piece of work like earlier. With designs as tough every bit Schulz's, that caused headaches. "It had so many warts and bumps and lumps and things," Melendez said.

A few major members of the squad were Nib Littlejohn and designers Ed Levitt and Ruth Kissane (she played a fundamental role in the iconic dance sequence). Melendez, who voiced Snoopy, reportedly storyboarded the special by himself.

Although they drew from their by experience with Peanuts, the team establish that A Charlie Brown Christmas was turning out rougher and more homespun than they'd intended. Melendez was peculiarly pained by Linus's famous oral communication sequence — "such poor animation, such bad drawings," he said. Lee Mendelson recalled the moment when all seemed lost:

... it was about three weeks before the show was to air, and we had never seen it in its entirety. So Beak and I and possibly x of his staff watched it. In the closing credits, they had misspelled "Schulz": they had a "t" in information technology. They had to redo that right away. Bill turned to me and said, "I think we've ruined Charlie Brown." Simply Ed Levitt [...] stood up and said, "This show is going to run for a hundred years." Everybody thought he was basics.

"I was so unhappy," Melendez remembered. "All the bad animation, the bad drawings."

Schulz and CBS didn't like the special at first, either. ("I thought it was a disaster, because the cartoon was so poor," Schulz later said.) But it aired anyway — it was too late to turn back. A Charlie Dark-brown Christmas premiered on December 9, 1965. And it became a titanic hit with viewers and reviewers alike. It won an Emmy.

Left to right: Mendelson, Schulz and Melendez take their Emmy (courtesy of *A Charlie Chocolate-brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition*)

In retrospect, it's pretty clear that Melendez and the team didn't realize what they had. They were fixated on lilliputian things — similar how Charlie Brown's tree "grows several branches betwixt the tree lot and its inflow at the rehearsal site," which Schulz found agonizing to lookout man.two

That misses the magic of what's happening. The artists' piece of work for A Charlie Chocolate-brown Christmas has a handmade quality that meshes perfectly with the story, the feeling. Their talent and experience was combined with the rush of product to create something that none of them would've made on purpose. Everything they'd learned allowed them to be spontaneous.

In that location'southward a touching innocence to the way A Charlie Chocolate-brown Christmas looks and moves — the same innocence that Schulz had put into the script. Later in life, Melendez seemed to come around a bit to what he hadn't seen at the time. "The inconsistencies and little problems seem to make it even more endearing to a lot of people," he said.

That'due south part of it, just it goes deeper. Discussing the speech sequence that Melendez hated then much, the veteran Pixar animator Doug Sweetland said this:

Linus'southward speech at the terminate of A Charlie Brown Christmas withal stands out equally i of my favorite moments. I've used that brilliant, understated interim in animation talks. A lot of times when you lot're an animator and you get a scene, yous're trying to figure out "What should I have the character practice?" when "What's the most truthful thing to do?" or "What is all the character needs to do?" may exist better questions.

2. News around the world

Epic MegaGrants and animation

This week, Ballsy Games shared figures well-nigh its MegaGrants program — a $100 million venture to fund game, animation and other projects. The company reported on its blog:

… since its launch in 2019, Epic MegaGrants has now supported more than i,600 creators and teams across 89 countries, with nearly 400 new recipients benefiting from the program this year alone.

Only some of those recipients are animators, only the numbers are worth paying attention to. Grants are a standard function of the animation ecosystem in Europe, but, in America, virtually production is based in California and made for large companies. Grant programs exist, just ones at the size of Epic MegaGrants, which offers up to $500,000, are rare to observe.

And Epic has clarified that this is a grant — "you lot will continue to own your IP and will be free to publish however you wish," it'southward explained. At a time when so few animators own their work, it'southward encouraging.

We're already seeing the early results. Chromosphere funded office of its indie series Yuki 7, released this yr, with MegaGrant money. Animators around the world are applying, as well. Final week, we reported that Kidscreen had named "real-time animation" a global trend of the yr, driven by Epic MegaGrants. DDEG in Canada has received a couple of them, helping it fund projects like Aiko.

It remains to exist seen whether this program will have Ballsy'due south intended effect — converting product pipelines en masse to its Unreal Engine technology. Merely information technology's hard to find and so much greenbacks with so few strings attached in blitheness. If Epic keeps upwards what it's doing, nosotros might well run into an Unreal blitheness smash.

Best of the rest

We had a few sad passings this week. One was animator Vera Pacheco, a veteran of Disney and Don Bluth Productions. Some other was Giannalberto Bendazzi (75), one of the globe's near important blitheness historians.
The American film The Bad Guys, produced at DreamWorks, drew a lot of attending this week with its trailer.
The upcoming Ghibli theme park in Japan's Aichi Prefecture now has a logo, designed by producer Toshio Suzuki. It's set to open in late 2022.
A few months agone, Tangent Animation in Canada laid off its entire staff without warning — or pay. Now, it's being forced to remedy that.
A notable tidbit from The Japan Times this calendar week. "Aside from a handful of contained licensors, the world of anime publishing in the W is now, for better or worse, in the hands of a few giant corporations."
Aslope staples like Cartoon Picture show and Cartoon Forum, at that place's now CartoonNext — a new event in France most "what's next for the blitheness manufacture."
During the Drawing Business concern event in the Canary Islands, three animation veterans laid out "the gilt rules for surviving blithe co-productions" in Europe.
Japan has merely i Oscar-qualifying festival for animated shorts right at present — under the unusual proper noun "Brusque Shorts Pic Festival & Asia." It just broadened its rules to allow for a wider multifariousness of entries.
In Ireland, Cartoon Saloon more doubled its profits between 2019 and 2020, attributed in part to the production of Nora Twomey'due south upcoming My Father's Dragon.
The Japanese director Makoto Shinkai (Your Name) has announced a new film called Suzume no Tojimari. It's due in tardily 2022.
Lastly, Screen Bluster looked at the top-rated animated films of the 2010s on Letterboxd — and the piece of work of indie animator Jonni Phillips placed twice. Her latest, Hairdresser Westchester (see below), debuted Dec 12.

3. Gems of the calendar month

*The Height of the Gods* and *Barber Westchester*

Two feature films grabbed our attention this calendar month. They're wildly different from each other, and in some ways polar opposites — but both are awe-inspiring achievements in what they're trying to exercise. The films are The Summit of the Gods and Barber Westchester.

We ofttimes read complaints that 2d feature animation is dead, that animated stories are samey and that adult-oriented animation isn't truly adult — just edgy. If that's you lot, so The Summit of the Gods, streaming on Netflix since the terminate of November, is i of your must-see films this month.

This project hails from France and Grand duchy of luxembourg, but information technology adapts a Japanese manga serial. It'south a story well-nigh mountain climbers — and a photojournalist whose search for 1 of them, a haunted man named Habu Joji, upturns his life. The tension is thick throughout, and at points becomes well-nigh overwhelming.

Merely manager Patrick Imbert (The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales…) doesn't lose command. He infuses Height with a rare level of filmmaking — you experience that every shot, every edit, is exactly where it must be to tell the story. Late in the flick, there are long sections without any dialogue, but the pace never wavers. In Summit, Imbert and his team have woven a tale about the drive to practice the impossible that stands as one of 2021'due south top films.

Barber Westchester is well-nigh that drive in another sense. It's a feature moving picture fabricated nearly all by one person. The project took two years, still director and animator Jonni Phillips somehow managed it with the help of a few friends — similar Ian Worthington (Bigtop Burger). The workload was inhuman. "It literally shouldn't exist," Phillips notes, "but it does anyway."

You could compare the event superficially to Home Movies with horror elements, but that's not information technology. Barber Westchester is a 90-minute, no-fi experience — one that finds structure in how intensely personal it is. Even the style Phillips moves the characters is pure expression, breaking away from whatever realism or dominion-following. Barber is less of a movie and more of an energy that invites you to live inside it.

It's about a would-be astronomer, Barber Westchester, who battles mental illness and a messy family unit. Every bit the plot unfolds (parrot infestations, clay doppelgängers), Barber has to cope with the discovery that infinite doesn't exist. That sounds surreal and funny, and it'south meant to be, but the emotions aren't played for laughs. The flick strikes an odd balance between sense of humor, fearfulness and poignancy — ane that's compulsively watchable.

We've never seen anything quite like Barber Westchester. Phillips has tapped into the essence of independent animation — it'south self-defining. No studio in America, no animator besides Phillips herself, could've fabricated this. The merely place where y'all can run into information technology right now is her Patreon page, where access costs as footling as $ii.

Barber, and the cute optimism it settles on, has stuck with us since our first watch. For us, it'due south 1 of the virtually unique and enchanting films this year. We recommend it.

4. Terminal word

And that'southward a wrap! This has been our final Sunday issue of 2021. They'll be back starting January 2.

We aren't going into hibernation until 2022, though. Our Thursday issues, for members merely, volition proceed through December. If you're a member, you can stay tuned for more great blitheness over the holidays.

To close out, we merely want to thank all of yous. When we launched this newsletter in February of this yr, we had no clue whether anyone would read it. We couldn't have imagined what was in shop. It'south our hope that our newsletter has been equally positive for you lot equally your readership has been for us.

Running the Animation Obsessive newsletter has been a crash class in merely about everything. Nosotros never expected to end 2021 with thousands of readers from all over the globe, just here nosotros are. With your support, we've been able to keep making the newsletter better, fuller and more interesting each month. We programme to get even more ambitious in 2022 — and we hope you lot'll stick with the states for the exciting stuff to come up.

See you once more soon!