From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section is missing citations or needs footnotes. Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies.(November 2007)

Stephen Hillenburg (born August 21, 1961, in Fort Sill, Oklahoma) is an American animator and is best known as the creator of Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants.

After graduating from Savanna High School, 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.^[1]

In 1992, he earned a Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation degree from the California Institute of the Arts.^{[citation needed]}

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 landed a job on the children's TV series Mother Goose & Grimm from 1991-1993. When attending the California Institute of the Arts he made his thesis film called 'Wormholes' (which was funded by the Princess Grace Foundation). Joe Murray, who created Rocko's Modern Life, saw his film and asked Steve if he would be a director on the show, to which he agreed.^{[citation needed]} He 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" 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.

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 Stephen rewrite it as an undersea cartoon series.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]} Nickelodeon executives bought the pitch and the series premiered in July 1999.

Karen, Plankton's computer wife on the show, is named after Stephen Hillenburg's wife.^{[citation needed]}

Hillenburg resigned from his position after creating the movie. But despite this, Hillenburg has contributed to the show since its inception, despite rumors that he left the show. He played the ukelele for the song "Best Day Ever."^{[citation needed]}

• Stephen Hillenburg at the Internet Movie Database
• NNDB Profile: Stephen Hillenburg
• Under the Sea and On Top of the World
• Hip to be SquarePants

This article relating to an animator is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This biographical article related to television in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.