Stephen Hillenburg
SpongeBob SquarePants creator BORN: AUGUST 21, 1961 DIED: NOVEMBER 26, 2018, AGED 57
THE animator, cartoonist, and marine biology teacher Stephen Hillenburg was the creator of one of America’s most popular children’s characters.
The Nickelodeon-animated television show was the fifth longestrunning American animated series, with 250 aired episodes.
Born in Lawton, Oklahoma and raised in Anaheim, California, Hillenburg became fascinated with the ocean as a child and developed an interest in art.
He combined the two while at the Orange County Marine Institute, writing a comic book about tide-pool animals, which he used to educate his students.
Hillenburg moved into television and worked on the Nickelodeon show Rocko’s Modern Life. After the show’s cancellation he developed the character SpongeBob SquarePants, the star of a series that chronicled the adventures and endeavours of the title character and his various friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. It originally aired in 1999 and became a global hit, dubbed into more than 60 languages.
The series’s popularity made it a media franchise, as well as the highest rated series to ever air on Nickelodeon and the most distributed property of MTV Networks. By late 2017, it had generated $13billion in merchandising revenue for Nickelodeon.
Hillenburg also wrote, produced and directed 2004’s The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, which made $140million worldwide.
In March 2017, he revealed he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neurone disease.
Earlier this year, he was honoured with a special Emmy for his contribution to the animation field.
He is survived by his wife, Karen and son Clay.