Editing A Charlie Brown Christmas (section)

=== Animation ===
Animation for ''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' was created by Bill Melendez Productions. Mendelson had no idea whether or not completing a half-hour's worth of animation would be possible given the production's six-month schedule, but Melendez confirmed its feasibility.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=19}} In actuality, animation was only completed in the final four months of production.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=59}} CBS initially wanted an hour's worth of animation, but Melendez talked them down to a half-hour special, believing an hour of television animation was too much.{{sfn|Solomon|2013|p=11}} Having never worked on a half-hour special before, Melendez phoned [[William Hanna]] of [[Hanna-Barbera]] for advice, but Hanna declined to give any. CBS gave a budget of $76,000 to produce the show and it went $20,000 over budget.{{sfn|Solomon|2013|p=11}} The first step in creating the animation was to make a pencil drawing, afterwards inking and painting the drawing onto a [[cel]].<ref name="makingof" /> The cel was then placed onto a painted background. There are 13,000 drawings in the special, with 12 frames per second to create the illusion of movement.<ref name="makingof" />

Melendez had previously worked for [[Warner Bros. Cartoons|Warner Bros.]] and [[Walt Disney Productions|Disney]], and working on ''Peanuts''-related material gave him a chance to animate a truly flat cartoon design.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=57}} The movement of Schulz's characters, particularly the ''Peanuts'' gang, was [[Limited animation|limited]]. The character of Snoopy, however, proved the exception to the rule. "He can do anything – move and dance – and he's very easy to animate," said Melendez.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=57}} Schulz had envisioned the special as essentially talking heads reciting the script; animator [[Bill Littlejohn]] recalled meeting resistance from Schulz when he and Melendez designed the sequence of Snoopy dancing on Schroeder's piano, as Schulz was concerned it distracted too much from the plot.<ref name=TS>{{cite news|author=Tom Sito|title=Bill Littlejohn: Off We Go... Taking Our Pencils Yonder...|date=August 24, 2007|publisher=Animation World Network|url=http://www.awn.com/articles/people/bill-littlejohn-we-go-taking-our-pencils-yonder/page/1,1|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110612014802/http://www.awn.com/articles/people/bill-littlejohn-we-go-taking-our-pencils-yonder/page/1%2C1|archivedate=June 12, 2011}}</ref>