The main thing about SpongeBob is that he celebrates innocence. His outlook on life is very optimistic and earnest, and I think kids relate to that. He has a creative spark in the same way children are very creative from an open and naive perspective.
— Stephen Hillenburg
I've always been interested in art and making things, but I chose not to go to art school because I thought I needed to do something else. Art was a tough way to make a living.
I was thinking about what would it be, what would the characters be like, and it just suddenly dawned on me that, hey, nobody is doing an underseas show. So I started drawing these weird invertebrate animals, various characters like crawfish and starfish and squids and sponge.
I am an ocean lover and fish watcher and had studied marine biology and even taught marine sciences before I got into animation.
I never imagined that I'd end up in animation, but marine biology and art collided, and here we are!
I drew these natural sponges for a while and gave them googly eyes, and it didn't come together until I drew a sink sponge one day. I thought, 'This is the guy.' He's the square peg, literally, in this world of animals.
I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one.
I studied marine biology, even taught marine science before I got into animation, so I had an interest in that field and those animals.
It's always great to hear adults say they can stand to watch our show.
It's not like the computer magically does it for you. Animation just takes forever.
A lot of things came out of my interest in marine biology, like the fact that there are scallops that fly in the air, and in SpongeBob's world, scallops swim the same way in the ocean.
I do think that the attitude of the show is about tolerance. Everybody is different, and the show embraces that. The character SpongeBob is an oddball. He's kind of weird, but he's kind of special.
For me personally, snorkeling in a cove in Hawaii, floating along, and looking at all the animals and the colors - I mean, that's pretty peaceful.
SpongeBob is an innocent, and people respond to an innocent. I don't think it matters if you're young or old.
I see SpongeBob on ice-cream trucks a lot, and I've got bootleg SpongeBob merchandise from Mexico.
I was into Jacques Cousteau as a kid and started scuba-diving around 14, which blew my mind. It was all colour, another world.
'The Simpsons' is a tough act to follow, so I thought it was best not to do what they do.
I wanted to create a small town underwater where the characters were more like us than like fish. They have fire. They take walks. They drive. They have pets and holidays.
Obviously, we're never going to say what the Krabby Patty secret formula is.
To be honest, there is a special gift for doing voice-overs, and the people who did the voices in the 'SpongeBob' cast are excellent at cartoon voice-overs, and they bring something extra to the reads.
In the spring of 1996, I was working for Nickelodeon on a show called 'Rocko's Modern Life,' and I was interested at the time in doing a show about the ocean, an undersea show.
SpongeBob is a kid living an adult life. He has a job. Kids think being a fry cook is a great job.
I never really imagined a show about a sponge going past our first season. I thought maybe we'd have a cult following, and we'd be gone after one season.
The characters are likable. Even the villainous Plankton - he's still flawed, and you still root for him, in a way, and the style of humor is simple, and it's about human behavior, and everybody can identify with that.
Laurel and Hardy are among my strongest influences, and I think they're perfect examples of two naive, kid-like characters that are still funny today. In fact, they're a lot like SpongeBob and Patrick, walking around in their own little world and causing a fine mess.
I'm hoping that fans will enjoy finally having a 'SpongeBob' comic book from me. All the stories will be original and always true to the humor, characters, and universe of the 'SpongeBob SquarePants' series.
We're always aiming for storytelling that feels a bit surreal.
Generally, we try not to write down to kids. We really just try to write a visual, character-driven cartoon that has a lot of slapstick and really appeals to us. I guess we are just lucky that other adults find that amusing, too.
For some reason, not many women go into cartooning.
The morality we all grew up with and are accustomed to is what feels right.
When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you can't anticipate this kind of craze. We just try to make ourselves laugh, then ask ourselves if it's appropriate for children.
I pitched the idea that SpongeBob and Patrick learn a swearword. Everyone said no. I couldn't even use a bleep. So I used a dolphin sound instead.
I was just looking at a packet that had SpongeBob thong underwear, so it goes farther than I would imagine.
I eventually thought of SpongeBob, but he needed a last name - SquarePants came to mind.
I just kind of figured that the marine biology would be a career, and the art would be something I did for my own self-expression.
A natural sponge is not as funny. A square sponge also fit that squeaky-clean idea I was going for.
On TV, it is more efficient to use voice-over people because it is really hard to get celebrity voices to recur in a series.
You don't want to work on a job where you're looking at your watch.
I was always interested in the ocean and also in art. I had to figure out how to put the two together, but painting fish sounded boring.
Our characters act silly, even totally ridiculous at times, and most of our jokes don't come out of pop cultural references. It seems like we're aiming at a child audience, but everyone can laugh at the basic human traits that are funny. It's playful, the humor is playful, the world is playful. You can kind of let go.
I thought, well, what about a show that stars undersea creatures, and some of the ones you rarely see animated. So, from there, I just started drawing different animals in a kind of a setting that was this nautical world. It's not realistic but sort of a fantastic environment.
I think the source of SpongeBob's humour is classic, and that's always appealing.
We wanted the humor to come from the characters and their world - you go down there to escape the world up here for a while. So when the crew would write jokes that would refer to American TV or culture, I'd just eliminate them because it just seemed odd that SpongeBob would know about it.
You have to imagine you write a show about a sponge and you think that maybe a few people will think it is funny, some college students, but it takes off. It is truly shocking - to the point where it is bizarre.
SpongeBob represents idiocy. He is dumb. Patrick is dumb. Mr. Krabs is greedy. Squidward is a snob and vain.
Everybody's got some fascination with undersea life, don't you think?
When SpongeBob's perseverance shines through, and you root for him - that's when the show is working.
The essence of the show is that SpongeBob is an innocent in a world of jaded characters. The rest is absurd packaging.
I studied natural resources planning and thought I could get a job at some marine park. But I was great at art and so-so at marine biology. It's funny how the two eventually came together.
I knew I wanted to create a character who was nerdy and kind of square, so when I drew a square sponge, everything came together. And originally his name was SpongeBoy, but there we couldn't use that for trademark reasons.
