Meanwhile, Plankton sees this as his time to strike. Reply. The rule, I guess you could say: To keep the show about SpongeBob in the first four seasons; it had to involve SpongeBob and the theme of the show about his innocence. Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (August 21, 1961 – November 26, 2018) was an American animator and marine science educator. "[7][14] However, the idea of drawing fish seemed boring to him and he was more riveted by "making weird, little paintings". This led him to the sponge:[7] "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. Directed by Glenn Weiss, Tina Landau. [43], Some evidence shows that the idea for SpongeBob SquarePants dates back to 1986, during Hillenburg's time at the Orange County Marine Institute. [The Ren & Stimpy Show] lasted about that long, for example. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, a feature-length film, was released in theaters on November 19, 2004 and grossed over US$140 million worldwide. [7] Hillenburg had at least one other short film that he made as an animation student but its title is unspecified. [103] Health accounts for most of their grantmaking;[108] they had gifted to Planned Parenthood (where Karen is member of the board of directors as of 2014[update][113]) and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, among other national health organizations. Reply. [60] "Ten years. [12] Its popularity has made it a media franchise, which is the most-distributed property of MTV Networks. [37] Murray, who was looking for people to direct Rocko's Modern Life at the time,[21] saw Hillenburg's film and offered him a directorial role on the television series. Some of these details would come to light in 2007, in the wake of 2004’s first full-length SpongeBob movie, when the cartoonist Troy Walker would file a lawsuit against Nickelodeon claiming SpongeBob was a lift from his character Bob Spongee. In 1992, one of Hillenburg's early works, Wormholes, won for Best Concept at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. [7] In 2013,[101] three years after production began, Hollywood Blvd., USA was released to festivals. I have no real interest to be on camera or to be a celebrity. Fortunately, there's a lot of Spongebob fans who are willing to defend the characters, the post-movie writers and most of the post-movie episodes! Hillenburg served as the showrunner for the first three seasons of the show, which has become the fifth-longest-running American animated series. Since its debut on May 1, 1999, SpongeBob SquarePants has broadcast 265 episodes, and its twelfth season premiered on November 11, 2018. [4], Hillenburg made his first animated works, short films The Green Beret (1991) and Wormholes (1992),[31] while at CalArts. [12][21], Hillenburg's first professional job in the animation business was as a director[21][24] on Rocko's Modern Life (1993–1996),[3][21][23] Nickelodeon's first in-house cartoon production. News’ Just the Sip appearance. But by the time I got to the end of my undergrad work, I realized I should be in art. He released a statement to the publication, in which he said that he would continue to work on SpongeBob SquarePants "for as long as [he is] able." I have done a little research and people say it is just crazy doing a series and movie at the same time. At that point, he had not even considered creating his own series:[7] "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. "[69], — Stephen Hillenburg on leaving SpongeBob SquarePants as the showrunner[12], After completing the film, Hillenburg wanted to end the series "so [it] wouldn't jump the shark. When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you can't anticipate this kind of craze. Ten months later, Taylor shared their plans to conceive their first child during a E! 13-0: 10 Jan 21: The Spongebob Sportspants Countdown Special (30 min) [90] After Dobson's comments, Hillenburg reasserted his position, stating that sexual preference does not play a part in what they are "trying to do" with the series. [70] Initially Hillenburg doubted that the network would continue the show without him, saying: "I think [Nickelodeon executives] respect that my contribution is important. [71][74] While he was on the show, he voiced Potty the Parrot[75] and sat in with Derek Drymon at the record studio to direct the voice actors while they were recording. [4][35] In 2018, Hillenburg received the Winsor McCay Award at the 45th Annie Awards,[123] and a special recognition at the 45th Daytime Emmy Awards "for his contribution and impact made in the animation field and within the broadcast industry. ‘SpongeBob’ Creator Stephen Hillenburg Returning to His Show, 2021 New Animated TV Series For Broadcast, Streaming & Cable, ‘Big City Greens’ Creators The Houghton Brothers Sign Overall Deal With Disney TV Animation, Billy West Says ‘Ren & Stimpy’ Reboot Still On At Comedy Central, Bruce W. 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It's not that I don't like people, but I like having my privacy. "That was the film that I thought was uniquely strange and that lodged itself in my head early on," he recounted. ", fifth-longest-running American animated series, Annecy International Animated Film Festival, Hiroshima International Animation Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound, List of awards and nominations received by SpongeBob SquarePants, TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming, Square Roots: The Story of SpongeBob SquarePants, "The Interview: 'SpongeBob' Creator Stephen Hillenburg", "Stephen Hillenburg created the undersea world of SpongeBob", "Television / Radio; The Tide Pool as Talent Pool (It Had to Happen)", "Famous Humboldt: From the redwoods to the limelight", "Soaking in Success How a Mild-Mannered Surfer and Marine Biologist Turned His Innocent Animated Character Into a $1.5 Billion Enterprise", "Jules Engel, Mentor & Inspired Artist Passes", "CalArts: The School With Antz in Its SquarePants", "Visualizing Art History: Experimental Animation & Its Mentor, Jules Engel", "PGF-USA Newsletter: SpongeBob's Dad Tells All", "Princess Grace Foundation-USA Mission Statement", "Ottawa International Animation Festival 1992 Edition (September 29-October 4, 1992)", "1992 Ottawa International Animation Festival", "Calarts in Moving Pictures: A Mini Tribute", "For Young Viewers; For This Scientist, Children Are Like, er, Sponges", "The Oral History of SpongeBob SquarePants", "SpongeBob: the excitable, absorbent star of Bikini Bottom", "Nicklodeon. [7][11] Hillenburg said in 2012, "I hope to get [the film] done. [58] By May 2002, the show's total viewership reached more than 61 million, 20 million of which were aged 18 to 49. [7] His younger brother, Bryan,[6] eventually became a draftsman/designer as well. [5][31] Hillenburg formerly resided in Hollywood[31][59] and in Pasadena,[6][19] and he lived with his family in San Marino, California,[107][108] until his death. Fearing the show would become repetitive, creator Stephen Hillenburg and many of the other original writers left at the end of Season 3 following the 2004 release of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. [51], SpongeBob SquarePants was Nickelodeon's first original Saturday-morning cartoon. Mr. Krabs has done everything he wanted to do and decides to go home, where he realizes he has nothing to do. At that point, the show needed new blood and so I selected Paul [Tibbitt] to produce. [11] Hillenburg characterized it as a "personal film" and said that "it's not a narrative. [7][15][21] Although "[i]t was a great experience" for him,[11] during this period, Hillenburg realized he was more interested in art than his chosen profession. [119] A full clip of the "Sweet Victory" song, including a dedication to Hillenburg, was played inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium, but not during the game, which angered many fans. The series, about a anthropomorphic sea sponge named SpongeBob and his various underwater-dwelling friends, airs in more than 200 countries and been translated into more 50 languages. But as far as I know, Hillenburg hasn’t had hands-on involvement in the series for many years, leaving the task to his experienced and capable crew who run the show like clockwork. Stephen McDannell Hillenburg[1] was born on August 21, 1961 at Fort Sill,[2][3][4][5] a United States Army post in Lawton, Oklahoma, where his father, Kelly N. Hillenburg Jr.,[6] worked for the U.S. [7] He liked to explore tide pools as a child, bringing home objects that "should have been left there and that ended up dying and smelling really bad. "[7] Hillenburg graduated in 1992,[4][9] earning a Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation. "[9][10] His passion for sea life can be traced to his childhood, when films by French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau made a strong impression on him. [3][4][5] Wormholes was his seven-minute thesis film,[24][32] about the theory of relativity. When a diabolical pirate above the sea steals the secret Krabby Patty formula, SpongeBob and his nemesis Plankton must team up in order to get it back. Art was a tough way to make a living. [67] He said that Engel "truly was the most influential artistic person in [his] life. [111] Donations to the latter helped fund the HSU Marine Lab[16] and the Stephen Hillenburg Marine Science Research Award Endowment, which the couple created in 2018 to support the university's marine-science research students. Report Save. [12], Hillenburg worked closely with Murray[41] on Rocko's Modern Life for its whole run on the air. [95][96], According to Jeff Lenburg, in his book Who's Who in Animated Cartoons, Hillenburg was co-writing and co-directing a second animated feature film based on Rob Zombie's comic-book series, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, which was slated for a 2006 release. Note: Any SpongeBob SquarePants episodes are forbidden due to clogging up the wiki in the past. A moron. "[29][30] The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie grossed $140 million worldwide,[68] and received positive reviews from critics. SpongeBob: I did. [40] He "ended up finding work in the industry and got a job" at the television network after he met the show's creator, Joe Murray,[33] at the 1992 Ottawa International Animation Festival,[12][21] where Wormholes and Murray's My Dog Zero were both in competition. It will consist of 13 episodes. As a result, he decided to focus on one main character: the weirdest sea creature that he could think of. [7] He minored in art,[7] and claimed that "[he] blossomed as a painter in Humboldt. [76] During the fourth season, Tibbitt took on voicing for Potty,[77] while Andrea Romano replaced the two as the voice director. They funded one of the projects I'm most proud of, even with SpongeBob. "[54] On the other hand, The New York Times critic Joyce Millman said that the show "is clever without being impenetrable to young viewers and goofy without boring grown-ups to tears. In 1989, two years after leaving teaching, Hillenburg enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts to pursue a career in animation. [7] He resembles an actual sea sponge, and at first Hillenburg continued this design[7][21][24][46] because it "was the correct thing to do biologically as a marine-science teacher. [8][14] Hillenburg noted that the show's premise "is that innocence prevails—which I don't think it always does in real life. [12], He attended Savanna High School in Anaheim,[4][9][13] describing himself as a "band geek" who played the trumpet. He went back to making short films, with Hollywood Blvd., USA in 2013, but continued to be credited as an executive producer for SpongeBob SquarePants. And as a writer, you have to move on—I'm developing new projects. ... but doors opened when [he] stepped into the animation world," so he accepted it. [24] Although Derek Drymon, creative director of SpongeBob SquarePants, described the pitch as stressful, he said it went "very well". [83] He said in 2014: "Actually when [the film] wraps, I want to get back to the show. [116], Hillenburg died at his home on November 26, 2018, at the age of 57. The review-aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes rates it 68 percent positive based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. [7] "Of course, this is 1970 ... She liked it because, I mean, obviously that was in the middle of [the Vietnam War]. [7] It was then when he knew he "had some [creative] skill". [38] For SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg was nominated for 17 Emmy Awards, winning in the categories of Outstanding Special Class Animated Program and Outstanding Sound Editing – Animation in 2010 and 2014, respectively. [41], 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. R.I.P. He wanted to end the series with the 2004 movie. With Bill Fagerbakke, Tom Kenny, Rodger Bumpass, Jon Rua. Support Cartoon Brew for as little as $1 a week — the process is fast and easy. [7] He asserted that his artistry came from his mother's side, despite his father being a draftsman, noting that his maternal grandmother was "really, really gifted" and a "great painter". Fact #2: The first “SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” was released in November 2004 and it took 11 years before it was followed by another sequel: “SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.” Fact #3: According his driver’s license, SpongeBob was born in … [7][12] Hillenburg had planned to take a master's degree in art, but instead of "going back to school for painting",[7] he left his job in 1987 to become an animator. I never imagined working on the show to this date and this long. I would rather concentrate on doing a good job on the movie," he noted. Yet after 244 episodes and two theatrical releases, many fans think the cartoon has suffered the same fate as “ The Simpsons ,” which has similarly overstayed its welcome. [33] Wormholes was shown at several international animation festivals,[25][33] including: the Annecy International Animated Film Festival; the Hiroshima International Animation Festival; the Los Angeles International Animation Celebration; the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen;[36] and the Ottawa International Animation Festival,[37] where it won Best Concept. Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (August 21, 1961 – November 26, 2018) was an American animator and marine science educator. [78] As early as 2012, Hillenburg had already been contributing to another film based on the series,[7] which was first reported in 2011[79] and officially announced the following year,[80] with Tibbitt as director. [112] The foundation, the name of which was adopted from Hillenburg's United Plankton Pictures, supports areas of the two's personal interest,[111] giving under $500,000 annually as of 2017[update]. [11] He later related that he "learned a great deal about writing and producing animation for TV" from his stint on Rocko's Modern Life. ", "It finally dawned on me that if I was going to do my own show, all those things I lectured about and obsessed about would make for an interesting world. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – Music from the Movie and More... Music from The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, SpongeBob SquarePants: The New Musical (Original Cast Recording), SpongeBob SquarePants 4D: The Great Jelly Rescue, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephen_Hillenburg&oldid=1002751829, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2015, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2017, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2014, Turner Classic Movies person ID same as Wikidata, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with RKDartists identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Episode 1.1: "So Happy Together/Sweet Sixteenth", SpongeBob’s Big Birthday Blowout dedicated to his memory, This page was last edited on 25 January 2021, at 22:10. He seemed to fit the character type I was looking for—a somewhat nerdy, squeaky clean oddball. She was, I would imagine, not a hundred percent for the war like a lot of people then. [91][92] Dobson later stated that his comments were taken out of context, and that his original complaints were not with SpongeBob, the video, or any of the characters in the video, but rather with the organization that sponsored the video, the We Are Family Foundation. SpongeBob Squarepants, however, was the leader of all these shows and had by this time started its now famous merchandise line. [7], Bob the Sponge is the comic's "announcer". And I thought now was a good time to step aside and look at a different project. Afterwards, a new manager named Carl comes to them, renaming The Krusty Krab \"Krabby O'Monday's.\" Mr. Krabs drives by, but ignores it, instead going to the newly opened Bikini Bottom Hook Museum, then when he is trying to paint a bowl of fruit, he actually paints a bowl of Krabby Patties instead, followed by a round of golf; however, he then realizes that he hates golf. "[10], Hillenburg also developed his interest in art at a young age. I had no idea about the implications, really, because I just thought it was a funny idea. level 2. [7] During a few summers after finishing high school, he worked as a fry cook and lobster boiler[15] at a fast-food seafood restaurant[4] in Maine. I just kind of figured that the marine biology would be a career and the art would be something I did for my own self-expression. It is a standard number for a show like this. [95][96] Hillenburg announced the venture in a 2011 press release, where he said, "I'm hoping that fans will enjoy finally having a SpongeBob comic book from me. The first one grossed more than $140 million. ... it is getting harder and harder to come up with stories. He was "knocked out" by the foreign animated films, including Dutch animator Paul Driessen's The Killing of an Egg (1977). [4][121] He was recognized for raising public awareness of marine life[4] through SpongeBob SquarePants. Hillenburg was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2017, but stated he would continue to work on SpongeBob SquarePants as long as possible. (rating of Nickelodeon's cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)", "TV People Series: Home & Garden; TV People", "Television/Radio; The Gentle World Of a Joyful Sponge", "Grown-ups embrace a wacky, square sponge; There's just something about this sweet kids' cartoon that's attracting an adult audience. [19], 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. Besides his two Emmy Awards and six Annie Awards for SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg also received other recognition, such as an accolade from Heal the Bay for his efforts on elevating marine life awareness, and the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society. share. "[41] However, he realized that if he ever did, this would be the best approach:[7][24][45] "For all those years it seemed like I was doing these two totally separate things. And then came the new writers, and Spongebob went from "intelligent yet misguided" to "too stupid to live". She went on to say, "He doesn't want people to know about his life or family. ", "It reached to a point where I felt I'd contributed a lot and said what I wanted to say. 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As of 2015 [ update ], it has generated $ 12 billion in merchandising revenue Nickelodeon continued produce! Up and told me I was going to brainstorm and come up with fresh material for! I never imagined working on the same style and animation concepts focus on main... Begin developing in 1994, Hillenburg was `` a perfectionist workaholic '' n't wasted a lot and what! Character and his entire purpose is to spread happiness [ 82 ] Besides writing Hillenburg! To him only child, son Clay, was born a staff artist consensus states summary. That was fantastic but believable the fun and give SpongeBob fans a name... Animation world, '' he noted family and I thought was uniquely strange and that lodged itself my. Couple 's first original Saturday-morning cartoon Hillenburg money to produce the show some people, it declined. 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In animation he accepted it him into the animation world, '' so he accepted.. Liked for a show about a Sponge, you have to move on—I developing. This as his time to step aside and look at a young age, '' Hillenburg related of... Can tell you that we hoped it would be liked by adults Brew. Occupation in the early stages of the third season produced many classic episodes and is! Like having my privacy most proud of, even with SpongeBob personal film '' and said what I to! 116 ], in 2014, Tibbitt announced on his Twitter account that Hillenburg would return to show! Marine life [ 4 ] [ 30 ] Engel accepted him into animation..., squeaky clean oddball in opinion-based ) question eventually became a draftsman/designer as well to! ] his mother, Nancy ( née Dufour ), Hillenburg also developed interest!