Stephen Hillenburg

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 (1993–1996) 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. Hillenburg announced he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2017, but stated he would continue 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 August 21, 1961 at Fort Sill, a United States Army base in Lawton, Oklahoma, where his father, Kelly N. Hillenburg Jr. (1936–2006), worked for the military; Kelly Hillenburg was a Methodist. Stephen's mother, Nancy (née Dufour), taught visually impaired students and came from a Methodist family. When he was a year old, the family moved to Orange County, California, where his father began a career as a draftsman and designer in the aerospace industry. His younger brother, Bryan, eventually became a draftsman/designer as well.

When an interviewer asked Stephen Hillenburg what he was like as a child, he replied that he was "probably well-meaning and naive like all kids." His passion for sea life can be traced to his childhood, when films by Jacques Cousteau, a French oceanographer, made a strong impression on him. Hillenburg said that Cousteau "provided a view into that world", which he had not known existed. He liked to explore tide pools as a child, bringing home objects that "should have been left there and that ended up dying and smelling really bad."

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. "Of course, this is 1970... She liked it because, I mean, obviously that was in the middle of [the Vietnam War]. She was, I would imagine, not a hundred percent for the war like a lot of people then. ... I had no idea about the implications, really, because I just thought it was a funny idea. I remember that still, that moment when she said, 'oh my gosh, look at that'", Hillenburg elaborated. It was then when he knew he "had some [creative] skill". He asserted that his artistry came from his mother's side, despite his father being a draftsman, noting that his maternal grandmother was "really, really gifted" and a "great painter". In the 1970s, someone took Hillenburg to the International Tournée of Animation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was "knocked out" by the foreign animated films, including Dutch animator Paul Driessen's The Killing of an Egg (1977). "That was the film that I thought was uniquely strange and that lodged itself in my head early on.", he recounted.

He attended Savanna High School in Anaheim, California, saying that he was a "band geek" who played the trumpet. At age 15, he snorkeled for the first time; Hillenburg took part in a "dive program" at Woods Coves in Laguna Beach, as part of the Regional Occupational Program at Savanna. This experience, as well as subsequent dives, reinforced his interest in, and led to his decision to study, marine biology in college: "The switch clicked and I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist, but I also liked being an artist." Some of his high-school teachers, who knew of his interest in art and fascination with the ocean, advised him otherwise, saying: "You should just draw fish." However, the idea of drawing fish seemed boring to him and he was more riveted by "making weird, little paintings". During a few summers after finishing high school, he worked as a fry cook and lobster boiler at a fast-food seafood restaurant in Maine. (This later inspired SpongeBob SquarePants's occupation in the television series.)

Hillenburg went to Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, as a marine-science major. He minored in art and said "[he] blossomed as a painter in Humboldt." 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: "Initially I think I assumed that if I went to school for art I would never have any way of making a living, so I thought it might be smarter to keep art my passion and hobby and study something else. But by the time I got to the end of my undergrad work, I realized I should be in art."

Early career

After graduating from college, Hillenburg held various jobs in 1984, including as a park service attendant in Utah and an art director in San Francisco, before landing the job he wanted: teaching children. He hoped to work in a national park on the coast, and eventually found a job at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute), an organization in Dana Point, California, dedicated to educating the public about marine science and maritime history. Hillenburg was a marine biology teacher there for three years: "We taught tide-pool ecology, nautical history, diversity and adaptation. Working there, I saw how enamored kids are with undersea life, especially with tide-pool creatures." He stayed at the Dana Point Marina and was also a staff artist. Although "[i]t was a great experience" for him, he realized he was more interested in art than his chosen profession.

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. It featured anthropomorphic forms of sea life, many of which would evolve into SpongeBob SquarePants characters, 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.

During that time, Hillenburg also started attending animation festivals such as the International Tournée of Animation and Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation, where student films from the California Institute of the Arts (colloquially called CalArts) were shown. He determined that he wanted to pursue a career in the field. He had planned to take a master's degree in art, but instead of "going back to school for painting", he left his job in 1987 to become an animator.

Hillenburg enrolled in CalArts's Experimental Animation Program in 1989. About the decision, he said, "Changing careers like that is scary, but the irony is that animation is a pretty healthy career right now and science education is more of a struggle." He studied under Jules Engel, the founding director of the program, whom he considered his "Art Dad" and mentor. Impressed by The Intertidal Zone, Engel accepted him into the program. Hillenburg said, "[Engel] also was a painter, so I think he saw my paintings and could easily say, 'Oh, this guy could fit in to this program.' I don't have any [prior experience in] animation really." Hillenburg graduated in 1992, earning a Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation. During his time at CalArts, he briefly drew comics for the surfing magazine KEMA in 1990.