BILL MELENDEZBill Meléndez, who died on 2 September, 2008, was a prolific animator who worked for Disney, Warner Bros and United Productions of America (UPA), and then founded his own production company, Bill Melendez Productions.He drew for the films Bambi, Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo and worked on scores of cartoon shorts starring characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.But he was best known for bringing Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the other characters of the Peanuts comic strip to life with animated series and feature-length specials. He also provided the 'voice' for Snoopy and his bird friend Woodstock.José Cuauhtemoc Meléndez was born in northern Mexico on 15 November, 1916, and educated in America. After leaving the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles he joined the studios of Walt Disney as one of many unsung animators involved in the painstaking process of early animated films.Three years later he moved to Warner Bros where - after four more years of toil - he got his first credits (as J C Melendez). In 1948 he moved to UPA where he worked on Gerald McBoing-Boing and Madeline cartoons as well as adverts.In 1964 he founded Bill Melendez Productions and the following year completed A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first film based on Charles M Schulz's Peanuts. It won an Emmy and the Peabody Award for best children's programme and has been repeated on television annually ever since.Over the course of the next five decades, more than 50 television specials, four feature films and two CBS series were made, with Mr Melendez overseeing them as director and producer.Other Bill Melendez productions included an award-winning animated film of C S Lewis's The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (1979), the Babar cartoons, animated versions of the Cathy and Garfield comic strips and hundreds of television commercials.Among the many awards the company has received are a dozen Emmys, several medals from the New York Art Director's Club, a National Cartoonist Society Award, and a second Peabody prize for What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983).Mr Meléndez died, aged 91,in hospital in Santa Monica after a tireless 70 years in animation. He was survived by his wife Helen, two sons, six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
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