The Art and Making of The Peanuts Movie

Two major comic strips that I grew up in my childhood was Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes and George M. Schulz’s iconic cartoon character Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. I remember having so much fun reading the strips as a kid with my siblings and then watching the Charlie Brown cartoon Holiday specials on TV with my grandparents. Just pure nostalgia. After years of waiting, we now finally get an “official Charlie Brown cartoon” from animation house Blue Sky Studios. Author Jerry Schmitz takes us Charlie Brown fans on an incredible journey inside Blue Sky Studios in The Art and Making of The Peanuts Movie.

You kids that grew-up in the Internet age don’t understand the impact of the Peanuts comic-strip. A little fun fact: “By the time the strip completed its run in 2000, Peanuts had an estimated readership of over 350 million people, in 2,600 newspapers, representing twenty-one countries around the world” (Schmitz, 13). Blue Sky Studios known for it’s popular Ice Age films took the challenge of putting Charles M. Schulz’s drawings into 3D CG-animation. The coffee-table size book goes behind-the-scenes with in-depth articles with the Blue Sky creative team, artwork, original comic strip works, CG animation stills, storyboards and photos. The Blue Sky animators talk about the process of bringing the Peanuts gang to animation without losing Charles M. Schulz “look” and “feel”. This was a long stressful and arduous task of defining the animation look of all the characters. Once that was done, the Blue Sky team had to bring Charlie Brown’s world, like the school, buildings, snowy lakes, Snoopy’s doghouse and town to life.

I had a fun time flipping through the pages, looking at the artwork and reading the original comic strips. Reading about the creative process and inside details of making the Peanuts movie and what it represents to George M Schulz, the Schulz family and fans was pretty incredible. This is well worth the $35.00 bucks, so you animation aficionados and Charlie Brown fans alike will enjoy The Art and Making of The Peanuts Movie and make it part of your personal library collection.