I walk by a very good chalk drawing of best friends SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick. They do provide a lesson for all of us during this pandemic about the necessity of friends — real friends, those people who know everything about you and love you anyway, who are always there for you. SpongeBob and Patrick have been best friends since they were born and have friendship rings to prove it. I will admit that I have not watched many of the episodes but seeing the chalk drawing made me want to get to know the characters of the show.
According to Wikipedia, the animated comedy television series SpongeBob SquarePants was created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. The series chronicles the adventures and endeavors of the title character and his aquatic friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. Thefifth-longest-running American animated series, its popularity has made it a media franchise. It is the highest rated series to air on Nickelodeon and ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks' most distributed property. As of late 2017, the media franchise has generated $13 billion in merchandising revenue for Nickelodeon.
Setting
The series takes place primarily in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom located in the Pacific Ocean beneath the real-life coral reef known as Bikini Atoll. Its citizens are mostly multicolored fish who live in buildings made from ship funnels and use "boatmobiles", amalgamations of cars and boats, as a mode of transportation. Recurring locations within Bikini Bottom include the neighboring houses of SpongeBob, Patrick and Squidward; two competing restaurants, the Krusty Krab and the Chum Bucket; Mrs. Puff's Boating School, which includes a driving course and a sunken lighthouse; the Treedome, an oxygenated glass enclosure where Sandy lives; Shady Shoals Rest Home; a seagrass meadow called Jellyfish Fields; and Goo Lagoon, a subaqueous brine pool that is a popular beach hangout.
When the SpongeBob crew began production of the series' pilot episode, they were tasked with designing stock locations, to be used repeatedly, where most scenes would take place like the Krusty Krab and SpongeBob's pineapple house. The idea was "to keep everything nautical," so the crew used plenty of rope, wooden planks, ships' wheels, netting, anchors, boilerplates and rivets to create the show's setting. Transitions between scenes are marked by bubbles filling the screen, accompanied by the sound of rushing water.
The series features "sky flowers" as a main setting material. When series background designer Kenny Pittenger was asked what they were, he answered, "They function as clouds in a way, but since the show takes place underwater, they aren't really clouds. Because of the tiki influence on the show, the background painters use a lot of pattern." Pittenger said the sky flowers were meant to "evoke the look of a flower-print Hawaiian shirt."
Top row, from left to right: Pearl, Plankton and Karen.
Bottom row: Sandy, Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob, Squidward, Gary, Patrick and Mrs. Puff.
Characters
The series revolves around the title character and an ensemble cast of his aquatic friends. SpongeBob SquarePants is an energetic and optimistic sea sponge who lives in a submerged pineapple with his pet snail Gary, who meows like a cat. SpongeBob has a childlike enthusiasm for life, which carries over to his job as a fry cook at a fast food restaurant called the Krusty Krab. His greatest goal in life is to obtain a license to drive a boatmobile. His favorite pastimes include "jellyfishing," which involves catching jellyfish with a net in a manner similar to butterfly catching and blowing soap bubbles into elaborate shapes.
Living two houses away from SpongeBob is his best friend Patrick Star, a dim-witted yet friendly pink starfish who resides under a rock. Despite his mental setbacks, Patrick sees himself as intelligent Squidward Tentacles, SpongeBob's next-door neighbor and co-worker at the Krusty Krab, is an arrogant, ill-tempered octopus who lives in an Easter Island moai, monolithic human figure. He enjoys playing the clarinet and painting self-portraits but hates his job as a cashier. He dislikes living between SpongeBob and Patrick because of their childish nature. The owner of the Krusty Krab is a miserly red crab named Mr. Krabs who talks like a sailor and runs his restaurant as if it were a pirate ship. He is a single parent with one teenage daughter, a sperm whale named Pearl, to whom he wants to bequeath his riches. Pearl does not want to continue the family business and would rather spend her time listening to pop music or working at the local shopping mall. Another of SpongeBob's friends is Sandy Cheeks, a thrill-seeking and athletic squirrel from Texas, who wears an air-filled diving suit to breathe underwater. She lives in an oak tree entrapped in a clear glass dome locked by an airtight, hand-turned seal and is an expert in karate, as well as being a scientist.
Located across the street from the Krusty Krab is an unsuccessful rival restaurant called the Chum Bucket. It is run by a small, green, one-eyed copepod named Plankton and his computer-wife, Karen. Plankton constantly tries to steal the secret recipe for Mr. Krabs's popular Krabby Patty burgers, hoping to gain the upper hand and put the Krusty Krab out of business. Karen supplies him with evil schemes to obtain the formula, but their efforts are unsuccessful, and their restaurant rarely has any customers. When SpongeBob is not working at the Krusty Krab, he is often taking boat-driving lessons from Mrs. Puff, a paranoid but patient pufferfish. SpongeBob is Mrs. Puff's most diligent student and knows every answer to the oral exams he takes, but he panics and crashes when he tries to drive a real boat. When Mrs. Puff endures one of SpongeBob's crashes or is otherwise frightened, she puffs up into a ball.
Special episodes of the show are hosted by a live-action pirate named Patchy and his pet parrot Potty, whose segments are presented in a dual narrative with the animated stories. Patchy is portrayed as the president of a fictional SpongeBob fan club, and his greatest aspiration is to meet SpongeBob himself. Potty likes to make fun of Patchy's enthusiasm and causes trouble for him while he tries to host the show. An unseen figure called the French Narrator often introduces episodes and narrates the intertitles as if the series were a nature documentary about the ocean. His role and distinctive manner of speaking are references to the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau. Recurring guest characters appear throughout the series including the retired superheroes Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, who are idolized by SpongeBob and Patrick; a pirate specter known as the Flying Dutchman; the muscular lifeguard of Goo Lagoon, Larry the Lobster; and the merman god of the sea, King Neptune.
Early inspiration
Series' creator Stephen Hillenburg first became fascinated with the ocean as a child and began developing his artistic abilities at a young age. Although these interests would not overlap for some time — the idea of drawing fish seemed boring to him — Hillenburg pursued both during college, receiving a major in marine biology and a minor in art. After graduating in 1984, he joined the Ocean Institute, an organization in Dana Point, California, dedicated to educating the public about marine science and maritime history.
While Hillenburg was there, his love of the ocean began to influence his artistry. He created a precursor to SpongeBob SquarePants: a comic book titled The Intertidal Zone used by the institute to teach visiting students about the animal life of tide pools. The comic starred various anthropomorphic sea lifeforms, many of which would evolve into SpongeBob SquarePants characters. Hillenburg tried to get the comic professionally published, but none of the companies he sent it to were interested.
A large inspiration to Hillenburg was Ween's 1997 album The Mollusk, which had a nautical and underwater theme. Hillenburg contacted the band shortly after the album's release — explaining the baseline ideas for SpongeBob SquarePants — and also requested a song from the band, which they sent on Christmas Eve. This song was "Loop de Loop", which was used in the episode "Your Shoe's Untied."
Stephen Hillenburg’s thesis film Wormholes
Conception
Hillenburg chose to study experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts. His thesis film, Wormholes, is about the theory of relativity. It was screened at festivals, and at one of these, Hillenburg met Joe Murray, creator of the popular Nickelodeon animated series, Rocko's Modern Life. Murray was impressed by the style of the film and offered Hillenburg a job. Hillenburg joined the series as a director and later, during the fourth season, he took on the roles of producer and creative director.
Martin Olson, one of the writers for Rocko’s Modern Life, read The Intertidal Zone and encouraged Hillenburg to create a television series with a similar concept. At that point, Hillenburg had not even considered creating his own series. He began to develop some of the characters from The Intertidal Zone, including the comic's "announcer", Bob the Sponge. He wanted his series to stand out from most popular cartoons of the time, deciding to focus on a single main character: the "weirdest" sea creature he could think of. In determining the new character's behavior, Hillenburg drew inspiration from innocent, childlike figures that he enjoyed, such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Jerry Lewis and Pee-wee Herman. He then considered modeling the character after a kitchen sponge and realized this idea would match the character's square personality perfectly.
Initially, Hillenburg wanted to use the name SpongeBoy — the character had no last name — and the series was to have been called SpongeBoy Ahoy! However, the Nickelodeon legal department discovered the name "SpongeBoy" was already in use for a mop product. In choosing a replacement name, Hillenburg felt he still had to use the word "Sponge," so that viewers would not mistake the character for a "Cheese Man." He settled on the name "SpongeBob." "SquarePants" was chosen as a family name after Tom Kenny — who had worked with Hillenburg on Rocko’s Modern Life — saw a picture of the character and remarked, "Boy, look at this sponge in square pants, thinking he can get a job in a fast food place." When he heard Kenny say it, Hillenburg loved the phrase and felt it would reinforce the character's nerdiness.
Pitching
While pitching the cartoon to Nickelodeon executives, Hillenburg donned a Hawaiian shirt, brought along an "underwater terrarium with models of the characters", and played Hawaiian music to set the theme. The setup was described by Nickelodeon executive Eric Coleman as "pretty amazing." They were given money and two weeks to write the pilot episode. In an interview, Cyma Zarghami, then-president of Nickelodeon, said, "their [Nickelodeon executives'] immediate reaction was to see it again, both because they liked it and it was unlike anything they'd ever seen before". Before commissioning the full series, Nickelodeon executives insisted that it would not be popular unless SpongeBob was a child who went to school, with his teacher as a main character. Hillenburg was ready to "walk out" on Nickelodeon and abandon the series, since he wanted SpongeBob to be an adult character. He eventually compromised by adding a new character to the main cast, Mrs. Puff, who is a boat-driving teacher. Hillenburg was happy with the compromise and said, "A positive thing for me that came out of it was [how it brought] in a new character, Mrs. Puff, who I love."
Writing
Unlike most of its contemporaries, SpongeBob SquarePants does not use written scripts. Instead, storylines are developed by a team of five outline and premise writers. A two-page outline is then assigned to a team of storyboard directors, who produce a complete rough draft of the storyboard. One of the methods used to assemble storyboards was to use Post-it notes. Most of the dialogue and jokes are added during this stage. Writer and storyboard artist Luke Brookshier has likened this process to how cartoons were made "in the early days of animation." The writing staff often used their personal experiences as inspiration for the storylines of the series' episodes. For example, the episode "Sailor Mouth," where SpongeBob and Patrick learn profanity, was inspired by creative director Derek Drymon's experience as a child of getting into trouble for using the f-word in front of his mother.
Animation and Music
Approximately 50 people work together to animate and produce an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Throughout its run, the series' production has been handled domestically at Nickelodeon Animation Studio in Burbank, California.
“[The music has gone] from mostly sea shanties and Hawaiian music à la Roy Smeck meets Pee-wee Herman — still the main style for the show — in the early episodes, but it now includes film noir, West Side Story to [Henry] Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith and [Steven] Spielberg,” music editor Nicolas Carr said. “There’s Broadway-type scores and plain old goofy, loopy, weird stuff. I try to push the envelope on this show without getting in the way of the story, and I try to push it up and way over the top when I can get away with it,all the time keeping it as funny and ridiculous as possible.”
Hillenburg felt it was important for the series to develop its own music library, consisting of scores that could be reused and re-edited throughout the years. He wanted these scores to be composed by unknowns, and a group of twelve was assembled — The Sponge Divers Orchestra.
Death
On November 26, 2018, at the age of 57, Hillenburg died from complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, which had been diagnosed in March 2017. Nickelodeon confirmed via Twitter the series would continue after his death. In February 2019 incoming president Brian Robbins vowed Nickelodeon would keep the show in production for as long as the network exists.
Ratings and achievements
Within its first month on air, SpongeBob SquarePants overtook Pokémon as the highest rated Saturday-morning children's series on television. It held an average national Nielsen rating of 4.9 among children aged two through eleven, denoting 1.9 million viewers. By the end of 2001 SpongeBob SquarePants boasted the highest ratings for any children's series, on all of television. Weekly viewership of the series had reached around 15 million, at least 5 million of whom were adults. In a statement, Brown Johnson, Nickelodeon's animation president said, "SpongeBob's success in reaching over 200 episodes is a testament to creator Stephen Hillenburg's vision, comedic sensibility and his dynamic, lovable characters. The series now joins the club of contemporary classic Nicktoons that have hit this benchmark, so we're incredibly proud."
Awards and accolades
SpongeBob SquarePants has received four Emmy Awards, six Annie Awards and two BAFTA Children’s Awards. Television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz said, "SpongeBob SquarePants is an absurdist masterpiece that Salvador Dalí and Groucho Marx would have watched together in their smoking jackets." TV Guide listed SpongeBob SquarePants himself at No. 9 on its list 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time in 2002. In June 2010,Entertainment Weekly named SpongeBob one of the 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years.
Legacy
In July 2009, Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in New York launched a wax sculpture of SpongeBob in celebration of the series' 10th anniversary. SpongeBob became the first animated character sculpted entirely out of wax. In May 2011, a new species of mushroom, Spongiforma squarepantsii, was described and named after the series' title character. After the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, SpongeBob became a fashion phenomenon, appearing on various merchandise items from hijabs to boxer shorts. The phenomenon led to the creation of the Tumblr project called "SpongeBob on the Nile," attempting to document every appearance of SpongeBob in Egypt. A clip was posted to YouTube in February 2013 that features soldiers in the Russian army and navy singing the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song as they march. According to the website that uploaded the video, this is one of the "most popular marching songs" in the Russian military.
Comments