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We spoke with Martino about merging the worlds of 2D and 3D animation, and why a Charlie Brown who is actually recognized and praised isn't much of a stretch for Schulz.

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Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown always failed, then triumphed, then failed, and so on. According to critics, "The Peanuts Movie" pretty much does the same.

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Charles Schulz's Charlie Brown always failed, then triumphed, then failed, and so on. According to critics, "The Peanuts Movie" pretty much does the same.

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A dedication ceremony, open to the public, will take place on October 1st.

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The families of artists often play a big role in maintaining the legacies of famous cartoon characters.

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A trailer has been unveiled for The Peanuts Movie. The video embedded above features scenes with Charles M. Schulz’s famed comic characters: Charlie Brown, Sally Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Linus van Pelt and Lucy van Pelt.

According to TIME.com, Craig Schulz (Charles’ son), Bryan Schulz (Charles’ grandson), and Cornelius Uliano collaborated on the script together. This animated film will hit theaters on November 6th. (via EntertainmentWeekly.com)

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Is the Peabody Awards the only prestigious awards event that actually 'gets' animation?

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Our first look at the 'Peanuts' series produced by Angoulême, France-based Normaal Animation.

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This one has been flying around the internet for years, but it always makes me laugh.

Maybe it will have the same satisfying effect on you.

It’s interesting, I think, that Sally uses the word “hell” here. In the context of Peanuts, it’s almost shocking. And therefore more powerful. And, I think, a little funnier.

Thank you, as always, Charles Schulz.

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To the average cartoon viewer, SpongeBob is SpongeBob and Bart Simpson is Bart Simpson, but cartoon connoisseurs recognize that characters evolve over the years, not just personality-wise but graphically.

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Ahead of the film's teaser trailer premiere later today, we've got our first look at the bigscreen CGI adaptation of "Peanuts" that is being produced by Blue Sky Studios.

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When the universe asks you if you would like to interview someone along the lines of Jean Schulz, wife of Peanuts creator Charles “Sparky” Schulz, the correct answer is somewhere along the lines of , “YES YES YES YES YES!”  And so it was that by some complete quirk of fate, I found myself speaking with Ms. Schulz recently.  What follows is a conversation covering everything from Sparky’s own interpretations of whether his work could be considered “art” to the recent pairing of Peanuts with ALA to the role of libraries in the world.

Betsy Bird: Just to recap, Peanuts, as I understand it, is pairing with ALA for library card sign-up month. At the same time Andrew McNeel the publishing company, is publishing Snoopy Cowabunga, now with a range of parenting reading tips (I think they’re even calling it Core Curriculum aligned).  So what has been your role with all of this?

Jean Schulz: Actually, I haven’t had any particular role except to say, “Yes, please pursue this.” It was actually Craig Herman who worked for Peanuts, Worldwide who pursued it. We’re the board members and we said yes go ahead. We said this is terrific. I think Peanuts is perfect.  Anyway it’s a perfect marriage.

BB: What is your personal take on libraries?

JS: I don’t remember going to the library as a kid because it was way out in the country.  But school libraries, yes.  We didn’t have computers so all of us used school libraries, all of us learned the Dewey Decimal System.  The library was just part of your life when I grew up.  And when I had kids in the 60s we went to the library all the time.  I’ve never been on the library commission board but we live in such a small community that the library, and donating your books to the library, and going to the library booksale, being a part of that whole community of the library and its fundraising and its storytelling, has been just part of my life.  I mean I don’t know if libraries are going the way of supposedly the newspapers but I don’t think so.  I still see families lined up to get into the library when it opens.

BB: So I grew up with Peanuts.  My parents grew up with Peanuts.  And now with Snoopy Cowabunga and the kids still reading newspaper comics we have children today growing up with Peanuts.  How do you account for its longevity?  What has kept it going all these years?

JS: I think that it deals with the real issues of life.  It deals with love, it deals with sadness, it deals with bossy people, it deals with shy people, it deals with success.  You know Charlie Brown is known for his failure but he never gives up.  It is a small microcosm of life, and then there is Snoopy who is everybody’s alter ego.  Sparky, my husband, used to say (I’ll refer to him as Sparky), “Snoopy is everything I would like to be and am not.“ 

BB:  Ah.  Like Walter Mitty.

JS:  Yes. Exactly.  And it really speaks to you.  When you’re a child and read comic strips it’s speaking to you.  You take seriously Charlie Brown’s heartache.  You take seriously Sally’s dislike of school trips.  You know you don’t want to go on the school trips either.  But when you get older you relate to those same things in an adult way.  And that is the secret of the comic strip is that it speaks to people on their own level.  I don’t know how Sparky did that.  That is a small miracle.  That by encapsulating it with humor he could make it acceptable to all levels, probably all educations, all cultures!  

BB:  That’s true.  I think that the great comics that came after Peanuts did similar things and followed in its footsteps, in that adults would get as much of a kick out of them as kids.  They would sort of cross generational lines.  It’s funny, I never thought of it that way. 

Now what is your take on kids and comics?  In the past comics were seen as throwaway literature. You know, no one would have given them any literary merit.  But these days you know libraries and teachers and parents are embracing them.  What’s your take on all that?

JS: Well, there are two things.  One is that my mother used to give comic books credit for teaching my brother to read.   Kids learned to read all the time with comics.  And obviously the comics in the paper come and go so fast, four seconds maybe, that by the time you put them in a book, which is what Andrews McNeel has done, you have given it a continuity.  And if you don’t know a word, the pictures help you.  Although I have to say in Peanuts it’s probably a little more subtle.  If you read the little early readers it’ll say “She saw the dog.”  Peanuts is more subtle than that, but still, the pictures are fun to look at and make you want to read the words, want to learn the words.  And, of course, because now they call them graphic novels they now have an acceptability in the marketplace.  Some of the people who do graphic novels don’t want them to be called “novels”.  They really like the term “comics!” And they think that people calling them graphic novels is so that they can sell them in the bookstores.

BB: Well, kids never ask for graphic novels.  Kids ask for comics.

JS:  That’s a good point.  Anyway, Sparky used to say “I am a cartoonist.  That’s what I want to be, that’s what I do, it’s my profession.  I don’t need to be an artist”, which of course he was because his drawings spoke to people.  “And I don’t need to be a writer.”  He said, “Don’t flatter me by saying” (and I’m not saying these are his exact words) “oh you’re a great writer, oh you’re a great artist.  I’m a cartoonist.“  And his point was, that was sufficient because that was a time honored way of communicating with people.  And you know people say the first cartoons were the ones on the walls of the caves. 

BB:  The original visual storytelling.

JS: Exactly.

So you asked what is my association with libraries.  My father loved reading, so when he died in 1973, (he lived in a small town in Noe Valley and he lived there all his life) his wife asked for donations to be made to the library.  Somewhere I had a list of the 50 books that they had bought with the money that came in, which was really nice to know.  Of course those books don’t last forever.  Back in 1973 we had given the money to the library or asked that people forward their money to the library and about ten or twelve or fifteen years later, probably late 80s, I wanted to do something additional.  I asked the library how they could use an endowment which would produce about maybe $2500 a year.  And they said storytelling.  And so with the money they hire storytellers, I think they have three or four a year, and it’s to keep the people in the library.  Because, you know, moms bring their children, dads bring their children, but when they get to be about 13 maybe they don’t want necessarily to come because they associate that with being younger. They developed the storytelling program that would bring in moms and 13, 14, 15 year-olds.  I haven’t been to any because Noe Valley is still an hour drive from me, but their late afternoons, early evenings, invite parents and slightly older children back into the library for adventurous stories that they can all enjoy.  So libraries have always been important.

And when you look at the comic strips, Sparky was a storyteller.  That’s what he was doing.

For the best children’s biography of Mr. Schulz of all time, please be sure to check out Sparky: The Life and Art of Charles Schulz.  Many thanks to Alison Hill for arranging for the interview and to Ms. Schulz herself for taking time out of her day to speak with me.

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Like Mary Anne, I learned the hard way not to lend my books. I was 12 when my favorite disappeared.

Yes, it was "just" a compilation of Peanuts cartoons. But it meant the world to me, once upon a time. First of all, it was a Christmas gift from my parents, and my mom had written a sweet message inside, along with the date. Secondly, I fancied myself a budding artist/illustrator back then, long before writing was on my radar.

I'd flop onto the floor and, for hours, painstakingly copy cartoons, frame by frame, from the Peanuts Treasury onto gigantic sheets of slick paper my mom found for me. I practiced until I could draw Charlie Brown in my sleep. Snoopy was a little tougher. But he was my favorite character, so I kept trying to capture every emotional nuance his body language conveyed:  a lifted ear here, a tilt of the  head there. . . .

That next spring, a friend asked to borrow the book, and I happily handed it over. Unfortunately, we grew apart over the summer as 12-year-old girls tend to do. When school started again, I asked her about my book and got a, "Me? What book? I don't have any of your books."

She smirked and walked away while I tried not to cry (and fantasized about taking her down). My mom called her mom. Her mom searched her room and said it wasn't there. And then . . . well, what could I do? Life goes on. What really irked me about the whole episode was that my mom had written that message inside the front cover; clearly, whoever had it knew it was mine, knew it was a Christmas gift. Ugh.

For weeks I plotted elaborate scenarios in which I befriended her again so she'd invite me to her house. We'd be in her room, and I'd ask for a glass of water, and when she left to get it, I'd search her room myself, and – aHA! – find my book between her mattress and box springs.

Didn't happen. And I stopped drawing.

Over the years, anytime I was at a garage sale or a used bookstore or even antique shops, The Book was in the back of my mind. I mean, there had to be other copies floating around out there, right? Never found one, though.

So you can imagine how my heart leapt when I checked online a few years ago and found this reprint of my own personal Rosebud:

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Deadline Hollywood broke the news this morning that 20th Century-Fox and Blue Sky Studios will produce a new feature length movie starring Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. The film is targeted for release on November 25, 2015, a date that commemorates the 65th anniversary of the comic strip by Charles Schulz (which began Oct. 2nd 1950), and the 50th anniversary of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas (which first aired December 9th, 1965). It’ll also be 35 years since the last theatrical Peanuts animated feature, Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!), from Paramount in 1980.

Steve Martino (Horton Hears A Who!, Ice Age: Continental Drift) will direct from a screenplay is by Craig Schulz and the writing team of Bryan Schulz & Cornelius Uliano. Craig Schulz and Bryan Schulz, who are Schulz’s son and grandson, will produce with Uliano.

Since Schulz death in 2000, I’ve been impressed how well the Schulz family has managed the Peanuts characters and brand. Unlike the Dr. Suess estate, the Schulz team has produced a wonderful direct-to-video film, a new comic book (from KaBoom) and merchandising that honors Charles Schulz and his legacy. Let us hope that this move into CG territory is handled with the same good taste.

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Signs of an advanced society: a restaurant devoted to a classic comic strip. This is the Charlie Brown Cafe in Hong Kong. More photos posted on this blog.

(via @magicjordanchan)

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Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: Charles Schulz, Peanuts

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Add the home of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz to the list of famous animator and cartoonist homes that have popped up on the real estate market recently. The 7,894-square-foot, 6-bedroom home was built in 1949 and is situated on two acres in northern California’s Sonoma County.

According to AOL Real Estate, Schulz purchased the home for $250,000 in 1973 from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa. Schulz and his wife Jeannie sold the home in 1996. The second owner listed the place way back in November 2009, and the price has now dropped from $2.9 million to $2.275 million. From the photos, which you can VIEW HERE, the place appears to be in need of an overhaul.

The home has a nice stained-glass window in a “chapel” room, which the real estate people suggest can be removed and replaced with a big-screen TV. They’ve even created a mock-up of what this new den of Godless debauchery could look like:

More photos of the home after the jump:

(Thanks, Carl Russo)

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Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Charles Schulz, Peanuts, Real Estate

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heyoscarwilde:

the original artwork to the front piece illustration for A Peanuts Treasury circa 1968.

art by Charles Schultz :: via comics.ha.com

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     Why do I write? Boy, what an easy topic. I can rip this blog off while watching Court TV and eating a tuna sandwich.
    Or so I thought. I had such lofty thoughts about The Muse and such. Yet, there was something vaguely familiar about them. And not familiar in a good way. Like in a plagiaristic kind of way.
     Then I realized who was being so philosophical in my head. Peanuts. Charles Schulz's Peanuts. Snoopy who fancies himself a writer (don't we all?). Linus, the thumb-sucking, blanket-dragging philosopher. And of course, Lucy the Critic. I have always been a huge Peanuts fan, but to admit they inspired me to write...well, then I'd also have to admit that I took my blankie with me to college. (Seriously.)
     Couldn't I at least claim Eudora Welty as my muse? She lived several blocks from my elementary school and I often saw her around town. I could. . .but it wouldn't be true.  However, once I got over my writing pretensions, I found my artistic connection to Charlie Brown and all the rest.
     The daily Peanuts strips were among the first things I read as a child.  I read the other comic strips too, but I never mused over them for days and weeks the way I did Peanuts.  Somewhere around eighth grade (slow muser that I am) I figured out why Snoopy and Lucy and Linus seemed closer to me than most flesh-and-blood people.
     The Peanuts gang are small children. Schulz never says how old his characters are, but I assume they were somewhere in the K-2 range. What do kids that age do? Ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. So do the Peanuts characters. Oh sure, there is usually a punchline, but a lot of deep and even religious questions appear before the tree eats Charlie Brown's kite( again), or Snoopy steals Linus's blanket.
    When I re-read my third grade journal, I see that I was asking questions, and trying to find my own answers.  This sort of soul searching evolved from simple question and answer format to the way I write today. I write to figure things out. (And I could have said that about 250 words ago.)
      Mostly, I use my stories and journals to work out the kinks in my own life.  For instance, Jimmy's Star began as a journal entry in which I was trying to figure out why something that had happened to me at age eight still enraged me as an adult. Now understand that my original incident doesn't appear at all in Jimmy. But in my journal, I wrote my way through that eight-year-old's rage, and discovered the true name and nature of this emotion.
      Yankee Girl began as a not-very-good memoir, and ended up as a catharsis. After I finished that one, I truly felt as if I had toted bags and bags of memories and emotions and thrown them in the Dumpster. Those characters and events are based in reality, so it really was like taking out the mental trash I'd been hauling around for forty plus years.
    Why do I write? To figure out life (good luck with that one, MA!) To get rid of my own demons and to honor the beautiful spirits I've had in my life. In every one of my books, I am still trying to help five or seven or eleven-year-old Mary Ann understand why things are. The funny thing is that just as you know Charlie Brown will never get his kite to fly, I see the same questions asked and answered over and over in my work. Charlie and I have had a lot of kites consumed by that kite-eating tree, but we keep trying. Wondering. Hoping. Trying to figure it out.
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman
      
    
    

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 by Kazu Kibuishi  Graphix / Scholastic  2010  A collection of occasionally-connected comic strips about a boy and his dog and a very strange, strangely reminiscent world... As a boy named Copper walks home with his dog he imagines his backpack is a jetpack that takes him zooming around the skies.  Instantly he's surrounded by other jetpack fliers... who all are dropping bombs on a city below.

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This proportionately correct real world Charlie Brown by Tim O’Brien is pretty cool. (via Box Brown).

It reminded me of Pixeloo’s “Untooned” drawings like his Homer Simpson:

He’s also done Jessica Rabbit, Super Mario, and Stewie.

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"Just give me the aspirin. I already got a Purple Heart."

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Finally, a newspaper syndicate gets it right. United Features has taken a nod from the webcomics world and made a move in response to the declining sales of newspapers by offering all of its content (including years of archives) at comics.com online for free. And not just that, but its RSS feeds which once only contained links, now contain the cartoons themselves.

Signing up for an account allows you to create your own custom RSS feed or homepage featuring whichever features you’d like. Now, the golden age of comic strips has come and gone, and United’s lineup includes some duds to be sure, but there are a few diamonds in the rough worth subscribing to. My custom RSS feed includes Dave Coverly’s Speed Bump, Jerry Van Amerongen’s surreal Ballard Street, Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy, and editorial cartoons by Pulitzer-winner Mike Luckovich:

Perhaps the greatest thing to come out of this is that United’s free comic library includes all 50 years of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts — that’s 21010 individual strips. If you can’t afford Fantagraphics’ 25-book reprint series, this should do you fine.

There are a few criticisms, still. First off, the site is BUTT UGLY. Sure they’ve adopted social networking features like commenting, star-ratings, and embed-codes, but it ain’t pretty. If you’re partial to nice, clean design, do yourself a favour and stick with their RSS feeds. Secondly, single-panel features are presented at the same width as strips. After years of complaining that comics in the newspaper are too small, here’s a case when they’re actually too big. On my laptop, I have to scroll to see the entire thing. There are links to higher-resolution versions of all the comics anyhow; the default size for the single panel titles could benefit by being slightly smaller.

But those are minor quibbles, and this is great news for anyone who wants to follow some of their favourite “print” comic strips online easily and without limitations. One can only hope that the other big syndicates follow suit and stop hiding their content behind outdated subscription models and text-only RSS feeds. I’m looking at you King and Universal.

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Hello all out there in the Land of Blog. It is I once again, the hippest Sith Lord ever to grace the Outer Rim, Darth Bill!!!!!! I'm pretty excited about this blog as I have an interview with Harold Buchholz the creator/writer/artist of "Acredale: Kolor Komics Kollection." I reviewed this book not to long ago, unfortunately this is one of the few Graphic Novels that I have reviewed that we do not as yet have in the PLCMC System (hopefully in the near future we can change this). There is good news though in that you can look and read the Graphic Novel Online, as you will find out in the interview, plus stuff that is not even in the published book. I highly encourage you to do so as this is a great comic!!!!!! In case you missed the earlier blog in which I reviewed "Acredale: Kolor Komics Kollection," just click here to see it: HERE!!!!!!!!!!



Harold Buchholz (left of the stand-up of Jimmy Dash) here at ImaginOn for the "Kids Love Comics Event" that we had back in June!!!!! (Also in the picture to the left of Mr. Buchholz are Rich Faber and John Gallagher)

And now without further commercial interruption, Questions & Answers with Harold Buchholz:



1) What were the first book and/or books you read as a kid that made you think “wow?”

The first book I can remember making a big impact was "Dr. Seuss's ABC". I received that as a Christmas present when I was five years old and I remember taking it with me all over the house. This amazing book was cracking the code of reading for me, showing me how letters and sounds worked together to create words and meaning. Reading was fun, and reading was opening up vast new worlds of understanding for me.

2) What gave you the idea for “Acredale: Kolor Komics Kollection” and such characters as Apathy Kat, Java, Samson, Proofy, Professor Straightlace, Suzie and Pepper?

I was working at a publishing company as a graphic artist. One day I was on the phone talking to a client and absent-mindedly doodling on a piece of scrap paper. A fellow artist, Lee Troxell, came by my cubicle and named the drawing "Apathy Kat." We joked about it and began making up a world that he would live in. I added his nemesis Professor Straightlace and his henchowl Proofy and friends that Apathy Kat might hang out with: Java, Samson, Pepper and Suzie in this small town I called Acredale. I wound up modeling Pepper somewhat on my wife. Other characters aren't based on anybody at all, although I think all characters tend to reflect parts of myself. I shared these ideas with other people and they seemed to enjoy them and that led to the comic book Apathy Kat, which can now be read online at http://www.acredale.com/.

3) Who do you consider some of your biggest influences as a comic/graphic novel creator?

I think my biggest influence is Charles Schulz, who wrote and drew the comic strip Peanuts for almost 50 years. From about the time I was seven years old I used to read the little Fawcett paperback collections of Peanuts, and it had a profound effect on me. In college I bought a copy of The Gospel According to Peanuts and realized that Schulz had even played a part in planting seeds that led to my new faith in God. That's an amazing influence for a man who was drawing four panels of a comic strip each day in his studio.

4) Why do you think it's cool for boys to read?

Reading is an amazing way to understand what other people think and feel, including those who are much different from you. Books are a way for people to boil down years of understanding and experience from which you as a reader can benefit. Reading is a gateway into worlds that otherwise wouldn't be available to you. Libraries are amazing storehouses of free knowledge that are available to anyone who is curious and wants to learn and grow.

5) Is it cool for boys to write/draw? Why?

Writing and drawing are great ways to explore ideas and share things that are inside of you but are otherwise hard to let others know about. Some people are happy to express themselves in other ways. I was very shy growing up and I found that writing and drawing provided a way to take time to share myself with others in a way that was fun for me and for them. It can take patience to create something that others can enjoy, but for someone like me, writing and drawing is very rewarding.


6) Who was your favorite comic book character when you were a boy? Do you have a favorite character now?

My favorite cartoon character was Snoopy, who was funny, cute, and very creative. The character I identified with most was Linus, also from the Peanuts comic strip. He was always sensitive but stubborn and was very concerned about being sincere. I don't have a favorite character now, but my favorite current comic strip is Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac. He's very funny.

7) What is your favorite sport?

Racquetball. It's so much fun you don't even realize that you're exercising! And it's inside four walls so you don't have to go chasing the ball after each point like you have to with tennis.

8) What do you like to do for fun?

I love hanging out with my wife. She's my best friend. I write comics for fun. I'm currently developing a new comic strip, WildLion, which will be available for free on the internet starting in Mid-October.

9) What is the favorite book you have written and/or drawn?

I'm very happy with the Acredale book (it was originally called Apathy Kat). That book contains the first two chapters of what was originally a four-issue comic book and as I mentioned before it can now be read online for free at http://www.acredale.com/. It has a lot of fun characters in it and it deals with issues of friendship, creativity, and the rewards (and dangers) of opening up your heart to others. I was able to put a lot of things that I cared about into that story.

10) Which do you like better--cheeseburgers or pizza? What do you like on them?

Pizza. My favorite is pepperoni with alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce. Yum!

Well, I would like to thank Mr. Buchholz (a very cool guy) for talking with us and encourage you, until we get the Graphic Novel in our collection, to go and visit the Acredale Site to read it online at http://www.acredale.com/. Also keep on the look out for his new comic strip, WildLion!!!!!!

Until next time me fine fellows,

Bill

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