Producer,
director,
animator and
voice actor of the
Peanuts feature films and
TV specials, starting with
A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. From Joe Viewer's standpoint, his biggest role in the screen adaptations of
Charles M. Schulz's comic strip was as the voice of
Snoopy. He performed almost all of Snoopy's growls, whimpers, and yipes. (The exception was for the TV adaptations of the musicals
You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown and
Snoopy, where Snoopy actually had a human voice.)
Melendez's biggest pet peeve as an animator was lip synching, and he is said to have spent hours on end matching the characters' mouth shapes to their spoken/sung lines, often using a mirror to see what his mouth looked like as he read the teleplay.
Melendez was also one of the main men responsible for bringing Garfield and Cathy to television.