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Stephen McDannell Hillenburg^[1] (born August 21, 1961) is an American animator, writer, producer, actor, voice actor, and director best known for creating the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. He currently owns his own production company, United Plankton Pictures. He has also written for Mother Goose and Grimm and Rocko's Modern Life.

Early life and education

Creator Stephen Hillenburg became an animator during his period of study at the California Institute of Arts.

After graduating from Savanna High School in Anaheim, California, Hillenburg enrolled in Humboldt State University and graduated in 1984 with a degree in natural-resource planning and interpretation, with an emphasis in marine resources.^[2]

In 1992, he earned a Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation from the California Institute of the Arts.^[3]

Career

He was a marine biology teacher at what is now the Orange County Ocean Institute. He worked as a marine biologist from 1984–1987. In 1987 Hillenburg decided to pursue a career in animation, his second lifelong passion. He made several short films, two of which were awarded and played in animation film festivals internationally. His two short films The Green Beret (1991) (which was featured in an episode of "Liquid Television"; MTV misspelled his name "Hillenberg" in the credits) and Wormholes (1992) became popular shorts in several film festivals - and received various awards.

While still attending animation school, Hillenburg received a job on the children's TV series Mother Goose & Grimm from 1991 to 1993. When attending the California Institute of the Arts he made his thesis film called 'Wormholes' (which was funded by the Princess Grace Foundation). Hillenburg displayed his films at various animation festivals. Joe Murray, creator of Rocko's Modern Life, met Hillenburg at an animation festival^[4] and asked Hillenburg if he would be a director on the show, to which he agreed. Hillenburg joined the Nickelodeon animated series as a writer, producer, and storyboard artist. While working on Rocko's Modern Life, Hillenburg became friends with Tom Kenny, who would later become the voice of SpongeBob, and future SpongeBob collaborators Doug Lawrence, Paul Tibbit and others.

When Rocko's Modern Life ended in 1996, Hillenburg developed a concept for a new show about sea creatures, drawing on characters he created for a comic book about tidepools in 1989 at the California Institute of the Arts. He focused the show on a sponge, which Hillenburg initially drew as a natural sponge but changed to a square sponge because it looked funnier. In 1997, Hillenburg teamed with some of his former "Rocko" colleagues, who helped design the show's backgrounds and characters.

SpongeBob SquarePants

While working at the Ocean Institute, Hillenburg wrote a comic book called "The Intertidal Zone". He showed it to Martin Olson, a friend and one of the writers of Rocko's Modern Life. Olson loved it and suggested that Hillenburg rewrite it as an undersea cartoon series.

In 1998, Hillenburg pitched the show to Nickelodeon, using an aquarium, character models, a theme song and the storyboard that would become the pilot episode, "Help Wanted." The main character's name was originally "SpongeBoy", but since the name was copyrighted, he changed it to SpongeBob. Hillenburg used some of the things he had created for Rocko's Modern Life, in Spongebob. An example is using short clips of live action footage. Nickelodeon executives bought the pitch and the series premiered on May 1, 1999, and the following episodes started airing on July 17, 1999. He played the ukulele on The Best Day Ever.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie was released in the U.S. on November 19, 2004. It received generally positive reviews from critics and successfully grossed over $140,000,000 worldwide. The film was intended to be the series finale, and creator Hillenburg announced that he would resign.^[5] However, in 2005, it was announced that SpongeBob would be continuing with a fourth season due in May. Stephen Hillenburg was rumoured to have left the series; however, he did not actually leave the show but resigned from his position as the show's executive producer.^[5]

References

External links

• Stephen Hillenburg at the Internet Movie Database
• Stephen Hillenburg at the Notable Names Database
• Under the Sea and On Top of the World
• Hip to be SquarePants