For almost 30 years, Bill Melendez Productions has been one of America's most successful independent animation producers. Part of its success is due to the exclusive franchise it has had on the Peanuts comic strip characters. However, the studio's success has gone well beyond these parameters and includes a number of other award winning productions.

Founder of the company, Jose Cuanhtemoc (Bill) Melendez, who was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico in 1916, began his animation career at Walt Disney studios in 1937, where he worked as an animator on "Fantasia," "Pinocchio," "Bambi," "Dumbo," and many Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons. "I'm an animator," Melendez states, "therefore I get involved in animation and with the animators in a very controlled sense. I communicate with my animators by making drawings." He was the leading director of animated TV commercials at Playhouse Pictures, where he first began making commercials based on Charles Schulz' Peanuts characters.

This association carried over to his own studio and gave him the opportunity to do the first Peanuts special, "A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)," which brought an Emmy Award and the prestigious George Peabody Award as Outstanding Children/Young People's program for 1965. It has now become the longest running special in American TV history, having been shown on CBS every year since its premiere. In turn, it has spawned 36 Peanuts specials, a Saturday morning TV series, the first animated TV mini-series and 4 theatrical features based on the Schulz characters.

Currently in production is a CD-ROM called "Get Ready For School, Charlie Brown!" a Children's Dictionary. Produced by Virgin Sound and Vision, Melendez produced the voicetrack and all animation for this complex educational tool for children, due for release in October '95. A series of 5 more such CD-ROM projects is in the planning stages, all based on the Peanuts characters and all animated at Melendez. Other current projects include ongoing national commercial TV campaigns for "Metlife" and "Chex Party Mix," as well as a national TV campaign for Christmas '95 for "Hallmark." Melendez Productions is also in the storyboard stage for another Charlie Brown Special, centering on an important birthday for Linus.

Over the years, the studio has won a total of 12 Emmy Awards and taken on numerous popular comic strip characters. These include the first series of Craffield the Cat specials, which brought an Emmy in '82.

Melendez veteran and creative director Evert Brown won an Emmy for his directorial debut in '88 with the CBS special "Cathy." He continues directing, with a concentration in commercials and developing the studio's computer capabilities.

One of things that distinguishes Bill Melendez Productions from most other studios of its size is the fact that it has facilities in both Los Angeles and London. In 1970, the company established what is now Melendez Films, Ltd. (formerly Bill Melendez Productions, Ltd.), in London, where it has made commercials, TV specials (including the two-part "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe"), and "Dick Deadeye," a theatrical feature based on the work of Gilbert and Sullivan. It has also shared production responsibilities on a number of projects with the Los Angeles operation.

When Melendez is asked how much supervision he exercises over work at the London studio, which is run by his son Steven, he says. "Well, almost the same I do here, except in commercials. I have good people there and I can trust them."

Bill Melendez Productions maintains a full time staff in Los Angeles of about 20-25, which generally expands to 40, and occasionally to 60, when in full production. While most of the production is centralized under Bill Melendez's supervision, much of the staff has been with the studio for 20 years or more, and tend to work pretty much on their own. As such, the staff tends to be very familiar with studio operations and thus require less supervision. "I've always worked with people who think like I do," adds Melendez.

Bill Melendez Productions, in both Los Angeles and London, produces traditional cel animation, mostly for television, but sometimes for theaters and CD-ROM. The animation has ranged from limited animation for Saturday morning shows to the more complex commercial styles of the 90's.

Copyright (c) 1995 United Features Syndicate. All Rights Reserved.