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Stephen Hillenburg created the undersea world of SpongeBob

a 10 questions and answers about SpongeBob, his home and his friends Stephen Hillenburg answers 10 pretty serious questions about SpongeBob and his friends. Things we had to know, so we asked: Q: Why does SpongeBob live in a pineapple house? A: It's all part of that tiki culture/surf culture. It's a common image. It's fruity, colorful and I imagine it smells good in there. That suits SpongeBob. He wouldn't live in a banana. Q: Did you mean to make some environmental reference to the Bikini Atoll? You know, that this is what happens when you mess with Mother Nature? (Bikini Bottom is SpongeBob's home, and the Bikini Atoll, a real place, is where the United States has tested numerous nuclear weapons.) A: Who knows what the testing has done, but no, it's not a definite statement on that. I do think we should be concerned about what happens when we drop bombs. It's not just people there. That's a definite statement. Q: What are other "SpongeBob" curse words you considered before coming up with the definitive "Barnacles"? A: Sometimes they say "tartar sauce," which speaks for itself, and there's "shrimp," and I like "flipping." Q: Why is Sandy Squirrelcheeks, SpongeBob's squirrel girlfriend, a Texan? A: She needed to be an adventurous modern woman, athletic, but still cute. 1 kind of got this astronauts-inspace image, and that's Houston, right? She could also say all those homey, interesting sayings they have in Texas. Like "hotter than a greased pig in the sunshine." You know what are those things called, euphemisms? Q: I don't know what you call them, but I know. what you mean. Next: The New York Times said that "SpongeBob's" overriding theme is "greed is not good." Do you think that's right? A: It's not like we have that posted on the wall or anything, but it's an OK thing to say. I kind of think it's about payback. Q: Really? A: Maybe not. Q: What's the secret recipe for a Krabby Patty? A: It's a secret never to be revealed, but it's not cow. Q: Why does Gary, SpongeBob's pet snail, meow? A: He's a pet, so he shouldn't be able to speak, you shouldn't hear what he's thinking. He has intelligence, but I didn't think he'd make a good barker. Q: Who's your favorite Rugrat? A: My 3-year-old son. Q: Are you SpongeBob? A: I get asked that a lot. I don't have a square flat maybe, but not square. Maybe all the characters are me. I can get moody. So yes, but no. -Spong Stephen Hillenburg created the undersea world of SpongeBob The man is spelling out "copepod." That's the kind of plankton that Plankton is and Stephen Hillenburg wants you to know that he knows that's the kind of plankton that Plankton is. But if the spelling isn't really important, and, in point of fact, the educational correctness isn't much, either, it's just that, well, Hillenburg does know about plankton. He also knows what makes a saltwater sponge work - and may have taught your children the same. Still, he is the one guy on the planet who figured out how to make that sponge funny. For starters, you make him a yellow household sponge who has a job as a fry cook. Then - here's the tricky part - you put him in a pineapple house that is frequently visited by a stupid starfish - no stretch there maybe - and I a cute girl squirrel from Texas who herself lives in an underwater biodome of some sort and breathes there are no underwater squirrels, you know - with the aid of scuba or something. Still, you have to get the spelling of copepod. He writes it out so it looks right. With that, Hillenburg starts to really warm up to the topic, which is, for the record, him. And he begins to tell about being from Anaheim, Calif., and getting to be this odd variation of famous and how the journey has something to do with naiveté, thong underwear and the art of the joke. It's really about what marine biology, experimental animation and silliness can combine to do to one man, then to the entire culture. It's about what Stephen Hillenburg saw, and continues to see, when he looks Bob By AMY WILSON The Orange County Register and A Tom Kenny voices the title character of "SpongeBob SquarePants" on Nickelodeon. butt, under the water and into his soul at the same time. It's about SpongeBob. For you amateurs, "SpongeBob SquarePants" is a buck-toothed, bubbleblowing, highly absorbent optimist who is the star of the highest-rated series on broadcast and cable TV among kids 2-11. Each week, it has something like 10 million viewers under 11, and an additional 5.3 million that are 18 and older. Which, as one publication pointed out, makes SpongeBob more watched than "Sportscenter." Hillenburg started out normal at Savanna High School in Anaheim and, at 15, found Woods Cove in Laguna Beach, where he snorkeled for the first time. That's where he saw everything that he had been missing. His life changed then and there, he says, graduating a few years later from Humboldt State with a degree in marine resource planning and interpretation. For three years in the late '80s, Hillenburg taught at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point and lived just about at the Dana Point Marina. He was also a fulltime artist who liked that the institute understood the interplay of the two disciplines. He liked the kids he took down to the tide pools every day. That, too, was part of his education. "It probably helped me get into the minds of kids without pandering to them," he says now. "The need to make curriculum that was fun, that had a profound effect on me. That you could both. But the show isn't designed to carry the allegiance of the science, though, if you watch 'SpongeBob,' you know that plankton are animals." In 1992, Hillenburg got a master's degree in experimental animation from the California Institute of Arts. Then he worked on Nickelodeon's "Rocko's Modern Life." Where he met SpongeBob's voice, Tom Kenny, and where he started to write down this "whole world in my head." The main idea was, he says, "to follow the life of an innocent." He'd always liked the classic funnymen, like Chaplin or Buster Keaton or PeeWee Herman. Stephen Hillenburg is the creator of "SpongeBob SquarePants" on Nickelodeon. "I needed to find what suited the character type," he says. Then he adds, really serious-like, "the square sponge, course." From there, he came up with what they call "a Bible" in the parlance, a whole world of creatures and characteristics and visuals and situations. To the Nickelodeon pitch, he brought an aquarium, Sculpty characters, beautiful artwork, a shell you could lift up that played the theme song. "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" "SpongeBob SquarePants." After launching in July 1999, it wasn't long before "SpongeBob" was crowding "Rugrats" for Nickelodeon supremacy a and there were no more hurdles to clear. Then, not long after start-up, Target do stores wanted SpongeBob. I He is now their No. 1 character property. He's also in the shape of CheeseNips, specialty crackers that Nabisco is now stocking in such nontraditional places as college bookstores. He has been a Burger King prize, a popular GameBoy title, and the first Good Humor ice-cream pop to outsell Snoopy. His T-shirt outsold "South Park's" on music.com. He was the first milk ad to feature an animated character. (Every time he sipped the chocolate milk, he soaked clean through.) And yeah, Stephen Hillenburg's bucktoothed buckaroo's got shirts, beanies, stickers, lunch boxes, backpacks and even thong underwear with his goofy likeness on them. There is considerable talk about a feature film. of Each show takes about five weeks to outline for the animators. From start to finish, each episode takes nine to 12 months to make. In the recording studio, the day's voice recording for "SpongeBob" is nearly finished. Tom Kenny is grunting on cue and Hillenburg and creative director Derek Drymon stand by. "You need to hit it when the muscle pops," Drymon explains to Kenny. "Muscles?" somebody in the room says. "You know," Drymon says, "the things I don't have." "It's why we're in cartoons," the sound engineer reasons, "to make funny of people who do." Hillenburg leans in to the complicated control board and everybody gasps. They explain that they don't actually let him touch the knobs. There's discussion about what the show is really about even as someone is seriously directing Kenny to "growl in the low register and pip in the higher pitch." What the show is really about, says Drymon, laughing, "is funny torture with no good reason.' Yup, they all laugh, that's the uplifting message you want on a signpost above the recognizable pirate painting in the suite of offices upstairs.
Article from 17 Feb 2002The Herald-Sun(Durham, NC)
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