Stephen Hillenburg

Stephen Hillenburg was an American animator, voice actor, and marine biologist. He was best known as the creator of the Nickelodeon animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants, which he directed, produced, and wrote. It has gone on to become the fifth longest-running American animated series of all time.

Early Works

Hillenburg first animated works were a collection of short films called: The Green Beret and Wormholes, He described the latter as "a poetic animated film based on relativistic phenomena"  In 2003 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; and the Ottawa International Animation Festival, where it won Best Concept.

Hillenburg stated that he had an "anything goes" approach in experimental animation. Although this allowed him to explore alternatives to conventional methods of film making, he still ventured to employ "an industry style"; he preferred to traditionally animate his films with hand drawn frames, this is shown in the first season of  SpongeBob SquarePants where all animations were drawn traditionally

SpongeBob SquarePants

The Concept for SpongeBob came about whilst Hillenburg was working as a marine-biology teacher at the Orange County Marine Institute, Whilst working there, one of the directors asked him if he would be interested in creating an educational comic book about the animal life of tidal pools. Hillenburg accepted this request eventually creating a comic called The Intertidal Zone, which he used to teach his students, it featured anthropomorphic forms of sea life, many of which would eventually evolve into SpongeBob SquarePants characters including "Bob the Sponge", the comic's co-host, who resembled an actual sea sponge.

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 aquatic animals like: crabs, octopuses, starfish, and sponges. This lead Hillenburg to the conclusion that the series should take place underwater, with a focus on those creatures. In an interview with The Abbey in 2004 Hillenburg stated that: "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." This concept suited what Hillenburg visualized for a show, "something that was fantastic but believable." He also wanted his series to stand out from most popular cartoons of the time such as 'Ren and Stimpy', 'Rugrats' and ' Hey Arnold', because of this, he decided to focus on one main character, (SpongeBob) and Hillenburg wanted the the weirdest sea creature that he could think of. This led him to the sponge, In an interview with 'This Scientist' hillenburg stated that: "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." In 1994, Hillenburg began to further develop some characters from The Intertidal Zone, including Bob the Sponge.

SpongeBob SquarePants was Nickelodeon's first originally produced  Saturday-morning cartoon, the show first aired as a preview on May 1, 1999, and officially premiered on July 17 of the same year. Hillenburg noted that the show's premise "is that innocence prevails—which I don't think it always does in real life."

The show has received positive reviews from critics, and has been noted for its appeal to different age groups, for example James Poniewozik from Time magazine described Spongerbob as "the anti-Bart Simpson, temperamentally and physically: his head is as squared-off and neat as Bart's is unruly, and he has a personality to match—conscientious, optimistic and blind to the faults in the world and those around him." as well as this  Joyce Millman from the New York Times, said that the show "is clever without being impenetrable to young viewers and goofy without boring grown-ups to tears. It's the most charming toon on television, and one of the weirdest. ... Like Pee-wee's Playhouse, SpongeBob joyfully dances on the fine line between childhood and adulthood, guilelessness and camp, the warped and the sweet.

Within its first month on air, Spongebob overtook Pokémon as the highest-rated Saturday morning children's series and by the end of 2001, the show boasted the highest ratings of any children's series on television. Eventually Nickelodeon added SpongeBob SquarePants to its Monday-through-Thursday calendar. leading to an increased the number of older viewers, by May 2002, the show's total viewership reached more than 61 million, 20 million of which were aged 18 to 49.

Hillenburg didn't expect the show would be very popular even to adults: "I never imagined that it would get to this point. When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you can't anticipate this kind of craze. We just try to make ourselves laugh, then ask if it's appropriate for children. I can tell you that we hoped it would be liked by adults. But we really thought the best we could hope for was a college audience."

SpongeBob SquarePants has gone on to become one of the longest-running series on Nickelodeon, as of May 1st 2019 the show has been running for 20 years, at the ten year anniversary of SpongeBob Hindenburg stated: "Ten years. I never imagined working on the show to this date and this long. It never was possible to conceive that. ... I really figured we might get a season and a cult following, and that might be it,". Its popularity has made it a media franchise, as of 2015, it has generated $12 billion in merchandising revenue.