Stephen McDannell Hillenburg (August 21, 1961 – November 26, 2018) was an American animator, writer, producer, director, voice actor, and marine biology educator. He was best known for creating the animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants for Nickelodeon in 1999. The show has become the fourth longest-running American animated series. He also provided the original voice of Patchy the Pirate's pet, Potty the Parrot.
Hillenburg was born in Lawton, Oklahoma and grew up in Anaheim, California. He became fascinated with the ocean as a child and developed an interest in art. He began a career in 1984, instructing marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute, where he wrote and illustrated The Intertidal Zone, an informative picture book about tide-pool animals, which he used to educate his students. After two years of teaching, he enrolled at California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita in 1989 to pursue a career in animation. He was later offered a job on the Nickelodeon animated television series Rocko's Modern Life (19931996) after the success of his 1992 short films The Green Beret and Wormholes, which were made as part of his studies.
In 1994, Hillenburg began developing The Intertidal Zone characters and concepts for what became SpongeBob SquarePants, which has aired continuously since 1999. He also directed The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), which he originally intended to be the series finale. He then resigned as showrunner, but remained credited as executive producer on subsequent seasons (even after his death). He later resumed creating short films including Hollywood Blvd., USA (2013). He co-wrote the story for the second film adaptation of the series, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015), and received a posthumous executive producer credit for the third film, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (2020).
Besides his two Emmy Awards and six Annie Awards for SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg also received other recognitions, such as an accolade from Heal the Bay for his efforts in elevating marine life awareness and the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2017, but continued working on SpongeBob for as long as possible. He died on November 26, 2018, at the age of 57.
Early life and education
Stephen McDannell Hillenburg was born on August21, 1961 at Fort Sill, a United States Army base in Lawton, Oklahoma, where his father, Kelly Nathaniel Hillenburg Jr. (1936–2006), worked for the military; Kelly Hillenburg was a Methodist. Stephen's mother, Nancy (née Dufour), When he was a year old, Hillenburg said that Cousteau "provided a view into that world", which he had not known existed.
Hillenburg also developed his interest in art at a young age. His first drawing was of an orange slice. An illustration which he drew in third grade, depicting "a bunch of army men... kissing and hugging instead of fighting", brought him the first praise for his artwork, when his teacher commended it. saying that he was a "band geek" who played the trumpet. at a fast-food seafood restaurant In 1984, he earned his bachelor's degree in natural-resource planning and interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He intended to take a master's degree, but said it would be in art: Hillenburg was a marine biology teacher there for three years: He stayed at the Dana Point Marina
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. He created a comic called The Intertidal Zone, which he used to teach his students. including "Bob the Sponge", the comic's co-host, who resembled a realistic sea sponge, as opposed to his later SpongeBob SquarePants character, a sea sponge whose stylized square shape resembles a kitchen sponge. He tried to get the comic published, but the publishers he approached turned him down. He studied under Jules Engel, the founding director of the program, Impressed by The Intertidal Zone, Engel accepted him into the program.
Influences
Hillenburg's graphic influences were Mike Kelley, George Herriman, E. C. Segar, Bill Watterson, Dr. Seuss, Max Fleischer, Jay Ward, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, George Dunning, Matt Groening, Jules Engel, Heinz Edelmann, Paul Driessen, Richard Condie and Joe Murray; the latter inspired many close-up shots of grotesque and extremely detailed drawings in several SpongeBob episodes. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges, W.C. Fields, Jerry Lewis, Jacques Cousteau, Monty Python, Jim Henson's The Muppets and Paul Reubens' Pee-wee Herman as being his comedic influences. about the theory of relativity. which assists emerging artists in American theater, dance, and film. The foundation agreed to fund the effort, providing Hillenburg with a Graduate Film Scholarship. and the Ottawa International Animation Festival, where it won Best Concept. LA Weekly called the film "road-trippy" and "Zap-comical", while Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "inventive".
Hillenburg explained 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 preferred to traditionally animate his films (where each frame is drawn by hand) rather than, for instance, make cartoons "by filming piles of sand changing".
Rocko's Modern Life
Hillenburg's first professional job in the animation business was as a director 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, on Rocko's Modern Life for its whole run on the air. Hillenburg was promoted to creative director, where he helped oversee pre- and post-production.
SpongeBob SquarePants
Creation
Some evidence shows that the idea for SpongeBob SquarePants dates back to 1986, during Hillenburg's time at the Orange County Marine Institute. "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. because it "was the correct thing to do biologically as a marine-science teacher". While Hillenburg "retained the idea of a living sea sponge", To voice the central character of the series, Hillenburg turned to Tom Kenny, whose career in animation had begun with his role in Rocko's Modern Life. Elements of Kenny's own personality were employed in further developing the character.
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".
Broadcast
SpongeBob SquarePants is Nickelodeon's first original Saturday-morning cartoon. and officially premiered on July 17 of the same year. Hillenburg noted that the show's premise "is that innocence prevailswhich I don't think it always does in real life." 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. 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."
SpongeBob SquarePants was an immediate hit. By the end of 2001, the show boasted the highest ratings of any children's series on television. Nickelodeon began adding SpongeBob SquarePants to its Monday-through-Thursday prime-time block. This programming change increased the number of older viewers significantly. By May 2002, the show's total viewership reached more than 61 million, 20 million of which were aged 18 to 49. SpongeBob SquarePants has gone on to become the longest-running series on Nickelodeon. "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.", Hillenburg said in 2009 during the show's tenth anniversary. Its popularity has made it a media franchise, which is the most-distributed property of MTV Networks. , it has generated $25 billion in merchandising revenue.
Departure
In 2002, Hillenburg halted production of the show after the third season was completed to focus on the making of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie which was released in 2004: "I don't want to try and do a movie and the series at the same time. We have 60 episodes and that is probably as many as [Nickelodeon] really needs. It is a standard number for a show like this. I have done a little research and people say it is just crazy doing a series and movie at the same time. I would rather concentrate on doing a good job on the movie.", he noted. He directed the film from a story that he conceived with five other writer-animators from the series: Paul Tibbitt, Derek Drymon, Aaron Springer, Kent Osborne, and Tim Hill. The writers created a mythical hero's quest: the search for a stolen crown, which brings SpongeBob and his best friend Patrick to the surface. In 2003, during the production of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, his mentor Jules Engel died at the age of 94. Hillenburg dedicated the film to his memory. He said that Engel "truly was the most influential artistic person in [his] life." and received positive reviews from critics. The review-aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes rates it 68 percent positive based on 125 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. Its consensus states in summary, "Surreally goofy and entertaining for both children and their parents."
He deemed her the funniest person he knew, and he named the SpongeBob character Karen Plankton after her. Karen gave birth to a son, Clay, also in 1998. His hobbies included surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, swimming, birdwatching and performing "noisy rock music" on his guitar.