Stephen McDannell Hillenburg was an American animator and marine science educator. He is best remembered for creating the Nickelodeon animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants. Hillenburg served as the showrunner for the first three seasons of the show, which has become the fifth-longest-running American animated series. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2017, but stated he would continue to work on SpongeBob for as long as possible. He died on November 26, 2018 at the age of 57.
About Stephen Hillenburg in brief
Stephen McDannell Hillenburg was an American animator and marine science educator. He is best remembered for creating the Nickelodeon animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants. Hillenburg served as the showrunner for the first three seasons of the show, which has become the fifth-longest-running American animated series. He co-wrote the story for the second film adaptation of the series, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, which was released in 2015. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2017, but stated he would continue to work on SpongeBob for as long as possible. He died on November 26, 2018 at the age of 57. His passion for sea life can be traced to his childhood, when films by French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau made a strong impression on him.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. He asserted that his artistry came from his mother’s side, despite his father being a draftsman, and that his maternal grandmother was really gifted and a great painter”. In the 1970s, Hillenburg took someone to the International Tournée of Animation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to show off his work. He said that he was ‘knocked out’ by the foreign animated films, including Dutch animator Paul Driessen’s The Killing of an Egg, which he thought was ‘a strange and strange film that I thought lodged itself in my head’ Hillenburg won two Emmy Awards, six Annie Awards, and the Television Animation Award from the National Cartoonists Society.
He also received other recognition, such as an accolade from Heal the Bay for his efforts on elevating marine life awareness, and an award for his work on The Green Beret and Wormholes. He had no recollection of life in Oklahoma, only of growing up in Anaheim, California. When he was a year old, the family moved to Orange County, California, where his father began a career as a draftsmen and designer in the aerospace industry. His younger brother, Bryan, eventually became a draftsmandesigner as well. Hillenburg said he was probably well-meaning and naive like all kids. 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. He wrote The Intertidal Zone, an informative picture book about tide-pool animals, that he used to educate his students. In 1989, two years after leaving teaching, he enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts to pursue a career in animation. In 1994, he began developing the characters and concepts for what became SpongeBob. The show has aired continuously since its premiere in 1999.
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