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THE DESIGN TEAM REFERENCED PHOTOS FROM CHARLES SCHULZ'S HOMETOWN FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD. create the right look," Cavaleri says. "When the kids are in school, the camera doesn't fit in the classroom. We needed a breakaway wall so we could put the camera across the street. If we had used a shorter lens, we would have distorted the characters' heads." For color, the design team referenced the Sunday comic strips. But, they found that, especially in the early days, the colors were more muted and pastel than they wanted. "We went to Santa Rosa and asked when Charles Schulz had a hand in coloring," says Lead Color Designer Vincent Nguyn. "The last thing for which he chose colors was the book 'Pea- nuts Jubilee.' These colors were saturated and vibrant. We used that, and since all the charac- ters came with their own colors, we decided to downplay the background. We kept it muted and tighter in range, and saved color for the characters." The design department set the scenes in winter to create a timeless and less specific feeling. Then they gave the light- ing department color keys. This department, too, discovered that creating Schulz's simplicity was a daunting effort in 3D. "When you have characters covered with fur or frantically flying, you can get away with a lot," says Lighting Supervisor Jeeyun Sung Chisholm. "Char- lie's head is huge and spherical, and so simple that we needed a perfect shading model." In this minimal world with snow oen covering the ground, muted backgrounds, and vibrant characters, the color of the light was particularly important. "Snoopy was a white dot in front of white snow," Chisholm says. "We had to make him a neutral gray." And while the crew used perfect five-point hero lights (key, fill, rim, top, and bottom bounce) with the bright light behind for the children, to make Snoopy pop, they had to do the opposite. "Our biggest challenge was bal- ancing how realistic the lighting should be," Chisholm says. "We tested a lot of levels of saturation and contrast, and explored a more stylistic approach." W H Y 3 D ? Given the enormous technical and artistic challenges inherent in making a respectful 3D version of the comic strip, why not just make a 2D animated feature? "One reason I wanted to do the movie in CG is that as I started working on the film, people came to me with Snoopy plush toys," Martino says. "The toys were yellowed. Their necks were floppy. People had this great connection with Snoopy as a plush toy. I thought if we could depict that soness and still have fun with him in animation, it would be a nice combination." Texture, Martino points out, gives audiences an anchor in the imaginative world. "Everything in this world is based on drawings, but the ma- terials give us something we can relate to," Martino says. "The wood texture, the doorknob, the stucco, or bricks on the side of a house. We can relate to these materials, and they tell us the scale is right. People can then believe the world exists and the character is alive." Martino also believes that CG can add emotion. "Nick Bruno tells this story," Martino says. "There's a mo- ment when something rough is going on for Charlie. He's down in the dumps. His head is down. Snoopy walks up behind him and is going to put his hand on Charlie's back. Because we have lighting, we see his shadow come up to meet his hand. His hand presses into Charlie's clothing, and we feel the con- nection. Because we get those subtle elements in CG, there's a stronger emotional connection in that moment." And then, to turn the question around, why – other than re- spect for Charles Schulz and the Peanuts fan base, not a small consideration – did they work so hard to bring elements of the comic strip into the 3D world? "People ask us why, if we're making a 3D film, did we em- brace the 2D and try to come close to the comic," Dunnigan says. "I think that's what is inno- vative about this film." "We picked the hard way," Lee says. Townley adds, "But it was the only way it could have been done." ■ Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW. VIDEO: GO TO EXTRAS IN THE SEPTEMBER.OCTOBER 2015 ISSUE BOX C G W. C O M s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 5 c g w 1 5