11-29-2018, 07:05 AM
[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)
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)
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.