February 1st, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Following the success of Snoopy in Space, AppleTV+ is debuting more great new Peanuts content. The Snoopy Show premieres this Friday February 5th. Executive Producer Mark Evestaff and Jean Schulz, President of the Charles M. Schulz Museum, discuss all the research and passion behind this series, which won’t disappoint generations of fans.
Jackson Murphy: I watched these episodes back in December. They’re so sweet and charming. And in the first episode, we get into Snoopy’s autobiography. It’s such a fun way to start. Why did you decide to start with this storyline?
Mark Evestaff: The first episode is a bit of an origin story in some ways. The source for all of these stories goes back to the comic strip. Charles Schulz did almost 18,000 strips. A lot of the stuff just came from the strip in terms of the idea generation. We thought we could do a bit of an origin story with Snoopy meeting Charlie Brown. We obviously took some liberties. It’s not exactly how it went in the strip, but it certainly was inspired by the strip.
JM: And Jean, we’ve had this big transition of the Peanuts characters over to Apple. What was it about Mark and his team’s vision for the next chapter of this iconic brand that made you comfortable with this team moving forward with these characters?
Jean Schulz: First of all, Apple wanted new content and they were willing to collaborate with Creative Associates, the business arm (if you will) of Peanuts Worldwide – with the Peanuts brand. And to work with the family: my stepson Craig and his son, who help with the writing. That was our comfort zone – that we would know that they weren’t going to take the Peanuts characters and do with them whatever they thought the market wanted at the time. That’s what happens with a lot of shows. If you see them, the first one is brilliant and then they just become clones of something else. And we don’t want that to happen to Peanuts because it’s too precious to us.
JM: These episodes feel so classic and genuine and nostalgic, but I think the new generation of kids will latch onto them because you stay true to who the characters are. Snoopy’s movements are so fast. How do you and the animation team create and work with his quick motions and his expressions?
ME: Honestly, it’s a lot of work. We learned… in the strips Snoopy’s quite vocal. He speaks his mind all the time. But obviously in the cartoons, he doesn’t speak. That was a big thing – he makes vocalizations. One of the big things we learned early is… a lot of pantomime and acting out. There’s no other way to make Snoopy than to just draw. We have a team of over 120 artists and really talented animators, composers, storyboard artists and directors. It’s basically just work. Going back to the strip for poses. We have the benefit of this huge library of Charles Schulz poses that we pull from. We’re being faithful to that.
JS: You had your team study the comic strip because in the comic strip, there are many strips that have no words. They tell a story with no words – with expressions, with eyes – closed and open. Your team, Mark, studied that and used that to make this authentic and funny.
ME: One of the interesting things Charles Schulz always said, “Cartooning is just simply good design.” And that’s a testament to the timelessness of these characters and the design. He was already a talented artist at a young age, and he just worked tirelessly to… continually refine these characters.
JM: You’re right that these characters are timeless. Around the holidays we watch the big specials. I like that in one of the episodes of The Snoopy Show, “Happiness is a Snow Day”, we see characters on the ice skating rink and they’re trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues. Jean, how did it feel for you watching Mark and the creative team bring us back to some of the classic holidays, places and situations?
JS: It’s been a relief to see as the show’s developed. You don’t know when you begin something… the story looks good. You see some preliminary drawings and preliminary animation. And you don’t know where it’s going to go from there. So everybody can have the best intentions but carrying those intentions out and as you said making Snoopy’s movements… look like Snoopy… it’s such a relief to see that it’s true to what we expect, both from the comic strip and from previous animation.
JM: Fans will not be disappointed. The Peanuts Movie from 2015 was such a delightful big screen feature for the gang. And in the “Frightfully Snoopy” episode, you take everyone to the cinema for a scary movie. How fun was that to put together?
ME: It was a lot of fun to revisit some of the stuff. A lot of these stories are pulled from [the strip] or inspired by… or nuggets. Just following Snoopy – he’s such a unique character. Unique to our world but also unique to the world of the Peanuts gang too, in terms of his flights of fantasy and his personas. It’s been an absolute delight. A dream come true, certainly for me as a big fan.
JM: Yeah. He’s a unique character in the entire animation library, without question. There will probably be many youngsters who are watching these characters for the first time through The Snoopy Show. Jean, what were your first reactions to seeing these characters… either in the strip or on one of the older specials for the very first time?
JS: You grew up with them. For me, I read the comic strip and then I saw the specials and they were just one of apiece. That’s what you expected them to be. It wasn’t, “Oh they’re taking a comic strip and they’re making…” I wasn’t that sophiscated. I just read the comic strip and saw the animated specials and thought they were the same. That’s the magic, I think, of it. You don’t recognize… If you’re as dim-witted as I am, you just think that it’s all the same.
JM: Those specials are so iconic. Mark, when working on Snoopy in Space and The Snoopy Show, what did you discover about Snoopy and Charlie Brown – even as a big fan – that you had never known or realized before?
ME: One of the interesting things is that even with all of this reference and all of these ideas, it’s really hard to draw these characters. One slight little movement. For a lot of our artists, it was really tricky to get the style because it’s so refined. If you move an eyeball slightly, it doesn’t look like Charlie Brown. If the head shape’s just off, it doesn’t look like the character. It’s really interesting, once you dig down, how difficult they are. And the pace. In today’s landscape a lot of these cartoons are really fast-paced, and the Peanuts pace is a little more slowed down. That was something that when we were looking at it and doing the animatics, we weren’t sure if it was going to work. But the Peanuts pace really worked and really felt right, and that’s reflected in the shows.
JS: I think that’s the miracle: learning how to draw that head that’s almost a circle but isn’t and is so recognizable. You can’t make a mistake with it. You have to get it right. The same with the bend in Snoopy’s nose and the length of his nose and the proportion of his ears to his face. All of those things are important to making it believable. There’s a funny story. The Harbin Ice Carvers did a Christmas show in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry a few years ago. We went down. They’re beautiful ice carvers. They’ve been carving in Russia for years. And they said that they had the hardest time making the head. So they had a great body and a great neck but they had a bunch of heads out in the backyard that they had to cut off and carve again. Even those people who weren’t making anything move – they were just static – they couldn’t get the head right without trying over and over and over again. And the whole idea of a bunch of Peanuts heads out in the backyard I thought was very amusing.
JM: Wow. You have to be precise with those details because the fans will notice. I hope someone has a picture of all those heads just sitting out there. And Jean, honestly, where does your experience with this Snoopy Show rank among all the Peanuts ventures that you’ve been involved in throughout your life?
JS: Gosh. It’s very exciting because it’s something that since my husband died 20 years ago, we have been saying that we have to give access to a new generation to the comic strip. And to his work and to his characters and to the philosophy and to everything Peanuts embodies. There have been bits and starts. It is a relief to be working with this group, WildBrain, and the care that they’re putting into it. And they better not stop putting the same care into it!
- INTERVIEW: Strap In For “Mars Express” - April 30, 2024
- INTERVIEW: Jeff Fowler On “Knuckles” And “Sonic 3” - April 22, 2024
- INTERVIEW: “Inside Out 2” Director And Producer On Pixar Sequel - April 16, 2024
Posted in 
Tags: 
