Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of the megahit Nickelodeon cartoon series “SpongeBob SquarePants,” died on Monday. He was 57.
The cause of death was ALS, which Hillenburg revealed he had been diagnosed with in March of last year.
“We are incredibly saddened by the news that Steve Hillenburg has passed away following a battle with ALS,” Nickelodeon said in a statement. “He was a beloved friend and long-time creative partner to everyone at Nickelodeon, and our hearts go out to his entire family. Steve imbued ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ with a unique sense of humor and innocence that has brought joy to generations of kids and families everywhere. His utterly original characters and the world of Bikini Bottom will long stand as a reminder of the value of optimism, friendship and the limitless power of imagination.”
Hillenburg graduated from Humboldt State University in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Planning and Interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources. He then became a marine biology teacher at the Orange County Marine Institute (now the Ocean Institute) in Dana Point, California. This interest, combined with his artistic talent and love of the sea and its creatures, led him to write and illustrate stories as teaching tools with characters that would later become the denizens of SpongeBob’s home, Bikini Bottom.
He began his animation career in 1987, pursuing a degree in Experimental Animation at the California Institute of Arts in Valencia and earning his Master of Fine Arts in 1992.
That same year he won an award for Best Animated Concept at the Ottawa International Animation Festival for his animated short “Wormholes”, which went on to be shown at various international animation festivals. From 1993 to 1996 he would pursue work in television as a director and writer on Nickelodeon’s series “Rocko’s Modern Life.”
From there, he began to work full-time on writing, producing, and directing on the animated series that would eventually become “SpongeBob SquarePants.” The first episode aired on Nickelodeon on May 1, 1999 and the series commenced its full run on July 17 of that year. The series has aired nearly 250 episodes to date. It appealed not only to children but older viewers as well, with college students even organizing viewing parties for the show.
The series has won both U.S. and British Emmy Awards, Annie Awards, and ASACP Awards and has been dubbed or subtitled in more than 60 languages, including Urdu, Azerbaijani and Maori.
Hillenburg also wrote, produced, and directed “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” which was released in 2004 and went on to gross over $140 million worldwide. Hillenburg then wrote the story for and was the executive producer of the sequel, “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water,” in 2015.
Hillenburg — or Steve as he was known to family, friends, and fans — was born August 21, 1961, at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma. After leaving the military, his father, Kelly N. Hillenburg, Jr., became a draftsman and designer for aerospace companies. His mother Nancy taught visually impaired students.
He is survived by his wife of 20 years Karen Hillenburg, son Clay, mother Nancy Hillenburg (nee Dufour) and brother Brian Kelly Hillenburg, his wife Isabel, and nieces Emma and Hazel.
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Mini Bio (1)
Stephen McDannell Hillenburg is the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants (1999), Nickelodeon's highest-rated cartoons for children and a staple of American television. He was born on August 21, 1961 in Fort Sill, a United States Army post in Lawton, Oklahoma, to Nancy (Dufour) Hillenburg and Kelly Neugent Hillenburg Jr.
Raised in Anaheim, California, he became fascinated with marine biology as a child and later developed an interest in art. He started his professional career in 1984 teaching marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute. He wrote 'The Intertidal Zone', a comic book about tide-pool animals which he used to educate his students.
In 1989, two years after leaving teaching, Hillenburg enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts to pursue a career in animation. He was later offered a job on the Nickelodeon animated television series Udangtangtang lokowa chingudeul (1993), after his success with short films The Green Beret (1992) and Wormholes (1992), which he created while studying animation.
In 1994, Hillenburg began developing The Intertidal Zone characters and concepts for what would become SpongeBob SquarePants. The show premiered in 1999 and has aired since then. He also directed The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), which he originally intended to be the series finale. However, Nickelodeon wanted to produce more episodes, so Hillenburg resigned as the showrunner. He went back to making short films, with Hollywood Blvd, USA (2014).
In 2015, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015) was released; the sequel to the 2004 film, it marked Hillenburg's return to the franchise, after he co-wrote the story and acted as an executive producer on the project.
Aside from two Emmy Awards and six Annie Awards for SpongeBob SquarePants, Hillenburg also received an accolade from Heal the Bay for his efforts on elevating marine life awareness, as well as the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society. Despite all this, he was involved in public controversies, including one that centered on speculation over the SpongeBob character's intended sexual orientation.
Hillenburg was diagnosed in 2017 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He stated that he would continue to work on his show for as long as possible. He died at age 57 on November 26, 2018 in San Marino, California, a year and a half after his diagnosis.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: hillenburgfan (updated by )
Family (2)
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Creator of Spongebob
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Trivia (6)
As a child he loved the films of Jacques Cousteau, so Stephen Hillenburg earned a degree in natural-resource planning and interpretation, with an emphasis in marine resources from Humboldt State University (Arcata, Calif.) in 1984. For three years he taught marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute (now known as the Orange County Ocean Institute), in Dana Point, California. He had always enjoyed drawing and painting, so he pursued a
master's-degree program in experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia. All these experiences came together to create SpongeBob SquarePants.
Owns a production company called United Plankton Pictures.
In March 2017, Hillenburg disclosed to Variety magazine that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal illness that affects and causes the death of neurons that control the brain and the spinal cord. He released a
statement to the publication, in which he said that he would continue to work on SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) "for as long as [he is] able." He added, "My family and I are grateful for the outpouring of love and support. We ask that our sincere request for privacy be honored during this time." At the time, Hillenburg was in the early stages of the disease, according to a source close to him. Hillenburg died on
November 26, 2018, from complications from ALS.
His remains were cremated and his ashes were sprinkled off the coast of Los Angeles County, California.
Before becoming an animator, Hillenburg worked a number of odd jobs, including, most notably, a fry cook- just like SpongeBob.
Personal Quotes (9)
"There is something kind of unique about [SpongeBob]. It seems to be a refreshing breath from the pre-irony era. There's no sense of the elbow-in-rib,
tongue-in-cheek aesthetic that so permeates the rest of American culture -- including kids' shows like the Rugrats. I think what's subversive about it is it's so incredibly naive -- deliberately. Because there's nothing in it that's trying to be hip or cool or anything else, hipness can be grafted onto it." -- Robert Thompson, professor at the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, in the New York Times, July 21, 2002.
We want the show to be really funny.
But I think in the end the message is: Treat people the way you expect to be treated. And another connection to any sort of message is that a lot of the stories come out of the personal experience I and the other writers had as kids--the harsh lessons in life which are usually very funny in retrospect, like maybe what happens when you learn your first curse word and you don't know what it means. [Washington Post, Oct. 15, 2001]
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, everyone can laugh at the basic human traits that are funny. It's playful, the humor is playful, the world is playful.
[when asked why the octopus has six tentacles instead of eight:] "Technically I just thought he'd be a little too cumbersome as a character to have too many legs visible. Maybe that's why he's so angry!"
I think the connection to SpongeBob
is that sponges are the most elastic, changing, plastic creatures . . . and I wanted him to be able to do things that were really magical. So [SpongeBob] has these really creative moments when he can re-form himself. But most sponges in the ocean are sedentary: They attach themselves to a rock and sit and filter-feed the rest of their lives, and reproduce, and that's about it. Not that they are not interesting, but they are not . . . mobile. They don't cook Krabbie Patties! [Washington Post,
Oct. 15, 2001]
When you set out to do a show about a sponge, you don't expect the kind of appeal that he's had. [Detroit News, August 8, 2002]
At first I drew a few natural sponges -- amorphous shapes, blobs -- which was the correct thing to do biologically as a marine science teacher. Then I drew a square sponge and it looked so funny. I think as far as cartoon language goes he was easier to recognize. He seemed to fit the character type I was looking for. [Washington
Post, Oct. 15, 2001]
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.
Working as a marine science educator, I had the chance to see how enamored kids are with undersea life, especially tide pool creatures. By combining this knowledge with my love for animation, I came up with SpongeBob SquarePants.