Bill Melendez, the Mexican-born animator who created the Peanuts characters and lent his voice to cartoon beagle Snoopy, has died in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 91, his publicist said.

Amy Goldsmith told the Los Angeles Times that the animator died Tuesday at St. John’s hospital, but the cause of his death was not revealed.

During his nearly 70-year career, Melendez earned four Emmy Awards, an Oscar nomination and two Peabody Awards. He worked at the Walt Disney Studio, Leon Schlesinger Cartoons, UPA and Playhouse Pictures.

Jose Cuauhtemoc Melendez was born in 1916, in Hermosillo, Mexico, and he later moved to Douglas, Arizona, ending up in Los Angeles after a few years. He began drawing in his childhood, and studied at the California Institute of the Arts, before joining the Disney studio in 1938.

While he was working for Disney, where he began his career, he contributed to some of the most famous cartoons of all times, including “Pinocchio,” “Bambi,” “Fantasia” and “Dumbo.” He also worked on Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck short films.

Melendez partnered with producer Lee Mendelson for about 43 years and the two have together released more than 70 Peanuts productions, including four feature films. He also used the Peanuts characters in more than 370 commercials, remaining the only animator that brought to life Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip figure, Snoopy.

“We had a wonderful relationship, the three of us, Schulz, Bill and I,” Mendelson said yesterday in an interview. “Bill moved the characters off the page. He didn't do anything too elaborate. By keeping that simplicity, that caused a seamless transition. I think that was the key to our success.”

Melendez’s first hit was the first Peanuts special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which was broadcast by CBS in 1965 and was an instant success, earning the animator both Emmy and Peabody awards. The animator drew the Peanuts characters in a very simple way, but, he told the Santa Fe Mexican in 1998, “because they are so simple, the thickness of a line can make a big difference.”

“It's difficult to control these characters and difficult to draw them. When you start moving them around, there are a million and one chances to change them,” he said.

To bring to life Snoopy’s wordless voice, Melendez spoke unintelligibly into a tape recorder and then played the tape at high speed.

In 1964, Melendez started running his own animation studio, where he employed 40 artists.

Besides the Peanuts figures, the jovial artist also created the first animated cartoons of Jim Davis's Garfield the cat and Cathy Guisewite's character Cathy, for which he won two Emmys. He also got an Emmy in 1979, for animating the popular children story by C.S. Lewis: “The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.”

Melendez is survived by his wife Helen Melendez, two sons, Steven Melendez and Rodrigo Melendez, as well as six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.