Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535742
SUMMER 2025 25 SUMMER 2025 25 Growing up, David Lux was an avid fan of the daily Peanuts comic strips, so to be part of a team creating new stories for Charlie Brown and the gang felt like "an opportunity to recapture some of my own youth," he says. Despite this early love of cartoons, Lux didn't start his career in animation. The Rhode Island native first stud- ied live-action filmmaking at the University of Southern California, and he used his drawing skills to storyboard his shots and set-ups for his student films. "Little did I know, those sketches would be the ticket to my first actual job on a major feature film," Lux says. This skill would also land him his first gig in animation when, 12 years later, he pivoted from live-action location work to be closer to home and help his wife raise their family. As a Storyboard Artist, Lux's favorite part of the job is the brainstorming sessions to solve problems. For Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin, the team wanted to create something new while recapturing the spirit of the original stories. As well, without a recur- ring event or holiday theme (i.e. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown), they wondered: "Could we make the story interesting enough to play repetitively each year when it was only about one character's backstory?" Lux's submission in the storyboard category illustrates how he tackled a solution within that bigger challenge—the film's complex soapbox derby race. "Since the original Schulz strips were often drawn with a flat, right-to-left orientation to fit the four- panel comic strip layout, it became tricky to see how far we could vary the shots from that form without feeling like the action didn't belong in the Peanuts world," he says. In modern-day car races, a lot of the exciting action is staged with motion moving into and away from the camera along a "Z" axis. "To integrate the modern expectations of a race with the original source material, so that the race remained dynamic and engaging but still felt true to the world created by Charles Schulz, was tough," Lux says. Lux relished being given the opportunity to work on the iconic franchise with characters that have been loved by children for generations. "You can't help but feel a sense of pride to have assisted in continuing to tell relevant stories with such timeless personalities," he says. As for this work leading to his Independent Achievement Award, "to see something I've drawn make it all the way through the animation process and end up on screen… is usually reward enough. But being given something so prestigious as the Emmy just makes the satisfaction all the more fulfilling." Looking back on the sketches that landed him his first jobs and carried his career forward, he adds: "The recognition sure makes the hundreds of thousands of drawings I've done over the years feel all the more worthwhile." For Lux's Emmy submission, a storyboard sequence demonstrates how he united comic strip and animation techniques for a soap box derby race. Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin images courtesy of Apple TV+. David Lux STORYBOARD ARTIST C AT EG O RY: Storyboard Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin