19 Comments

I love the special and the album. What a great article!

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Thank you! That's really kind. We're huge fans of both and have been meaning to write about this music since last year -- glad we finally had the chance!

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Thanks for this piece, really fun stuff. We still watch this as a family, along with the Halloween and Thanksgiving shows, every year.

I have a question you might be able to help me with. If someone wanted to make cartoon drawings by hand, scan them and animate them with audio/music today - is there a software program that you would recommend to do this? Not sure if this is your wheelhouse but any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

In any event cheers and merry Christmas!

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Really happy you enjoyed it! We love this special ourselves (same with The Great Pumpkin).

As for your question, there are a few programs capable of doing this. One you might consider is OpenToonz, which Studio Ghibli has used for a long time -- most recently for The Boy and the Heron.

It's a free suite of animation tools and can be used for a purely digital pipeline, but it also has a powerful scanning feature for people who want to draw on paper. This is professional-grade software, so it has a learning curve, but we've found it to be pretty accessible (and there are a lot of English-language tutorials online). You can find it here: https://opentoonz.github.io/e/

Hope that's helpful! Merry Christmas to you as well!

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That's amazing! Thanks so much I'll def check it out and hopefully we'll have something fun to show you someday soon.

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Thanks so much!! I just knew the soundtrack was so good and unique from the strip. It made me happy to find it and listen on the internet archive! I didn't know they also carry music! I've always relied on them for books! This made me smile today.

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Wonderful to read this -- thank you! And yes, there's a lot of great music on the Internet Archive! It's a real treasure trove we're always exploring. Such an amazing resource.

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This was lovely!!!🥹✨️ hidden along the paragraphs you can see how much time and love was put in this research🫶✨️ Happy holidays!

*english is not my first language. so i apologize if it sounds (reads) odd😅*

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Happy holidays! And thank you so much for this super kind message (it reads just fine)!

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Fascinating details, thank you and Merry Xmas!

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Merry Christmas -- and glad you liked it!

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You still hear his Peanuts music played every Christmas as you go about shopping. It’s a part of all our lives now.

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It really is. Songs like Linus and Lucy and Christmas Time Is Here are burned into so many people's memories at this point. And they still hold up!

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Great article!

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Thank you so much! Glad you liked it.

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To have a jazz score playing for an animated Christmas special was a novelty and a complete game changer. Vince G. Deserves all of his flowers. Great article.

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Thank you -- and definitely! This score never gets old.

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Thank you😌♥️

Merry Christmas!

Onward to Bethlehem.....✨🌴🐪🌌👑

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Glad you enjoyed, and Merry Christmas to you as well!

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