[url=the creator of Spongebob Squarepants][/url]
the creator of Spongebob Squarepants
Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (August 21, 1961 – November 26, 2018) was an American animator, cartoonist, and marine biology teacher. He was the creator of the
Nickelodeon animated television series
SpongeBob SquarePants (1999–), which he also directed, produced, and wrote. It has gone on to become the
fifth longest-running American animated series.
Born in
Lawton, Oklahoma, and raised in
Anaheim, California, Hillenburg became fascinated with the ocean as a child and developed an interest in art. He started his professional career in 1984, instructing marine biology, at the
Orange County Marine Institute, where he wrote
The Intertidal Zone, an informative comic book about
tide-pool animals, which he used to educate his students. In 1989, two years after leaving teaching, Hillenburg enrolled at the
California Institute of the Arts to pursue a career in animation. He was later offered a job on the Nickelodeon animated television series
Rocko's Modern Life (1993–1996) after his success with short films
The Green Beret and
Wormholes (both 1992), which he made while studying animation.
................
After graduating from college, Hillenburg held various jobs in 1984, including as a park service attendant in Utah and an
art director in San Francisco, before landing the job he wanted: teaching children.
[8] He hoped to work in a national park on the coast,
[12] and eventually found a job at the
Orange County Marine Institute (now known as the Ocean Institute),
[12] an organization in
Dana Point, California, dedicated to educating the public about
marine science and
maritime history.
[19] Hillenburg was a marine-biology teacher there for three years:
[4][5][20] "We taught
tide-pool ecology, nautical history,
diversity and
adaptation. Working there, I saw how enamored kids are with undersea life, especially with tide-pool creatures."
[10][21] He stayed at the Dana Point Marina
[14] and was also a staff artist.
[8][16][22] Although "
t was a great experience" for him,[12] during this period, Hillenburg realized he was more interested in art than his chosen profession.[20]
While working there one of the educational directors asked him if he would be interested in creating an educational comic book about the animal life of tidal pools.[8][12][23] He created a comic called [i]The Intertidal Zone, which he used to teach his students.
[23] It featured anthropomorphic forms of sea life, many of which would evolve into
SpongeBob SquarePants characters[24]—including "Bob the Sponge", the comic's co-host, who resembled an actual
sea sponge, as opposed to his later SpongeBob SquarePants character, who resembles a
kitchen sponge.
[25] He tried to get the comic published, but the publishers he approached turned him down.
[8][12]
[/i]
At one point during his tenure with the Orange County Marine Institute, Hillenburg started going to animation festivals such as the International Tournée of Animation and Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation where films made by California Institute of the Arts (colloquially called CalArts) students were shown.[8][13] He determined that he wanted to pursue a career in that field.[8][13] Hillenburg had planned to take a master's degree in art, but instead of "going back to school for painting",[8] he left his job in 1987 to become an animator.[24][25]
In 1989,[12] Hillenburg enrolled in the Experimental Animation Program at CalArts.[5][24][25] About this decision, he said: "Changing careers like that is scary, but the irony is that animation is a pretty healthy career right now and science education is more of a struggle."[26] He studied under Jules Engel,[27][28] the founding director of the program,[28][29] whom he considers his "Art Dad" and mentor.[28][30][31] Engel accepted him into the program impressed by [i]The Intertidal Zone.
[8][25] Hillenburg said, "[Engel] also was a painter, so I think he saw my paintings and could easily say, 'Oh, this guy could fit in to this program.' I don't have any [prior experience in] animation really."
[8] Hillenburg graduated in 1992,
[5][10] earning a Master of Fine Arts in
experimental animation.
[5] [/i]
Hillenburg made his first animated works, short films
The Green Beret and
Wormholes (both 1992
[32]), while at CalArts.
[4][5][6][26] The Green Beret was about a physically challenged
Girl Scout with enormous fists who toppled houses and destroyed neighborhoods while trying to sell
Girl Scout cookies.
[4][5][6] Wormholes was his seven-minute thesis film,
[25][33] about the
theory of relativity.
[4][5][33] He described it as "a poetic animated film based on relativistic phenomena", in his grant proposal in 1991 to the
Princess Grace Foundation,
[34] which assists emerging artists in American theater, dance, and film.
[35] The foundation agreed to fund the effort, providing Hillenburg with a Graduate Film Scholarship.
[34][36] "It meant a lot. They funded one of the projects I'm most proud of, even with
SpongeBob. It provided me the opportunity just to make a film that was personal, and what I would call independent, and free of some of the commercial needs," he said in 2003.
[34] Wormholes was shown at several international animation festivals,
[26][34] including the
Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the
Hiroshima International Animation Festival, the Los Angeles International Animation Celebration, the
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen,
[37] and the
Ottawa International Animation Festival,
[38] where it won Best Concept.
[39] LA Weekly labeled the film "road-trippy" and "
Zap-comical",
[40] while
Manohla Dargis of
The New York Times opined that it was inventive.
[29]
Hillenburg explains that "anything goes" in experimental animation. Although this allowed him to explore alternatives to conventional methods of filmmaking, he still ventured to employ "an industry style"; he prefers to
traditionally animate his films (where each
frame is drawn by hand) rather than, for instance, make cartoons "out of sand by filming piles of sand changing".
[8] Hillenburg had at least one other short film that he made as an animation student but its title is unspecified.
[13][22]
Spongebob Squarepants
Some evidence shows that the idea for
SpongeBob SquarePants dates back to 1986, during Hillenburg's time at the Orange County Marine Institute.
[45] He indicated that
children's television series such as
The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse (1987–1988) and
Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986–1991) "sparked something in [him]." He continued, "I don't know if this is true for everybody else, but it always seems like, for me, I'll start thinking about something and it takes about ten years to actually have it happen, or have someone else believe in it... It took me a few years to get [
SpongeBob SquarePants] together."
[22]
During the production of
Rocko's Modern Life,
Martin Olson, one of the writers, read
The Intertidal Zone and encouraged Hillenburg to create a television series with a similar concept. At that point, he had not even considered creating his own series:
[8] "After watching Joe [Murray] tear his hair out a lot, dealing with all the problems that came up, I thought I would never want to produce a show of my own."
[42] However, he realized that if he ever did, this would be the best approach:
[8][25][46] "For all those years it seemed like I was doing these two totally separate things. I wondered what it all meant. I didn't see a synthesis. It was great when [my two interests] all came together in [a show]. I felt relieved that I hadn't wasted a lot of time doing something that I then abandoned to do something else. It has been pretty rewarding," Hillenburg said in 2002.
[5] He claimed that he finally decided to create a series as he was driving to the beach on the
Santa Monica Freeway one day.
[42]
As he was developing the show's concept, Hillenburg remembered his teaching experience at the Orange County Marine Institute and how mesmerized children were by tide-pool animals, including
crabs,
octopuses,
starfish, and
sponges.
[4][5][42] It came to him that the series should take place underwater, with a focus on those creatures: "I wanted to create a small town underwater where the characters were more like us than like fish. They have fire. They take walks. They drive. They have pets and holidays."
[42] It suited what Hillenburg liked for a show, "something that was fantastic but believable."
[42] He also wanted his series to stand out from most popular cartoons of the time exemplified by
buddy comedies such as
The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991–1995). As a result, he decided to focus on one main character: the weirdest sea creature that he could think of. This led him to the sponge:
[8] "I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one."
[43] In 1994,
[16] Hillenburg began to further develop some characters from
The Intertidal Zone,
[8][16] including Bob the Sponge.
[8]
Bob the Sponge is the comic's "announcer".
[8] He resembles an actual sea sponge, and at first Hillenburg continued this design
[8][22][25][47] because it "was the correct thing to do biologically as a marine-science teacher."
[42] In determining the new character's personality, he drew inspiration from innocent, childlike figures that he enjoyed, such as
Charlie Chaplin,
Laurel and Hardy,
Jerry Lewis, and
Pee-wee Herman.
[45][8][22][48] He then considered modeling the character after a
kitchen sponge, and realized that this idea would match the character's square personality perfectly:
[8][22][25] "
t looked so funny. I think as far as cartoon language goes he was easier to recognize. He seemed to fit the character type I was looking for—a somewhat nerdy, squeaky clean oddball."[42][49] To voice the central character of the series, Hillenburg turned to Tom Kenny, whose career in animation had begun with his on [i]Rocko's Modern Life. Elements of Kenny's own personality were employed in further developing the character.
[50][51][/i]
In 1997, while pitching the cartoon to executives at Nickelodeon, Hillenburg donned a Hawaiian shirt, brought along an "underwater terrarium with models of the characters", and played Hawaiian music to set the theme. Nickelodeon executive Eric Coleman described the setup as "pretty amazing".[25] Although Derek Drymon, creative director of [i]SpongeBob SquarePants, described the pitch as stressful, he said it went "very well".
[25] Nickelodeon approved and gave Hillenburg money to produce the show.
[52] [/i]
(from Wikipedia)