A Charlie Brown Valentine Original and Limited Edition Art

A Charlie Brown Valentine is the 40th animated television special based on characters from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. It features the Peanuts characters during the week leading up to Valentine's Day. It is the second Valentine's Day-themed Peanuts special, following Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975). Initially broadcast February 14, 2002 on ABC, A Charlie Brown Valentine was the first new Peanuts special to air on television since 1994's You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown, and the first original special to be televised since Schulz's death in February 2000. A Charlie Brown Valentine was the first Peanuts special to be produced after the 2000 death of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz. It also marked the third time a Peanuts special was animated with digital ink and paint as opposed to traditional cel animation (the first one to do so was It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown in 1997.) The animation was done by Korean studio My Plan Animation; A Charlie Brown Valentine was their only Peanuts work. Lee Mendelson stated in 2012 of the animation outsourcing: "Everyone started sending work overseas. It didn't seem to affect the final outcome. If they can do it as well as we can do it for a lot less money, fine. If it didn't look good, Sparky would never have allowed it. If we had gone to him and said, 'We can't afford to do it here anymore,' and we couldn't do it well overseas, he would have just said, 'Let’s not do anymore.'"^[2] The special features a drawing style similar to the comic strip, with a white outline around Lucy's short hair and Snoopy's long ears (this was dropped in future specials). A Charlie Brown Valentine also depicts the Little Red-Haired Girl in full view, though she remains unnamed in this special, in contrast to her first full-view appearance in It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977) when she was named Heather. She also does not resemble the "Heather" version in any way; that version last appeared in the 1988 special Snoopy!!! The Musical.