"Spon... Spo... Spo...!"
This SpongeBob SquarePants episode transcript is incomplete. You can help Encyclopedia SpongeBobia by adding new content to the page. |
This article is a transcript of the SpongeBob SquarePants DVD bonus feature "The Origin of SpongeBob SquarePants." It can be found in the The Complete 1st Season DVD, which was released on October 28, 2003.
- [The special feature starts with Stephen talking about his interest in the ocean]
- Stephen Hillenburg: My interest in the ocean was sparked early on by the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau which aired on television in the 60's and, you really had no one had ever seen anything like that before. He had started doing those specials and it was like landing on the moon for me.
- [cuts to the Ocean County Institute]
- Hillenburg: So, after college, I got a job at, what was called The Orange County Marine Institute, now it's known as The Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California. Harry Hilling, the director, asked me to do a comic about tide pool ecology, [cuts back to him] so I came up with this idea of doing this comic book called The Intertidal Zone, and it starred basicially all these invertebrates sea creatures from the tide pools in Southern California [shows illustrations of comics] , such as Sea Star, Barnacles, Shore Crabs, and actually the host was a sponge named Bob, but not like SpongeBob, he was a natural looking sponge. [cuts back to him] I reached the point at the marine institute where I was more interested in creating things and painting and sculpting. [slideshow of his art begins] I started using motors and parts from old toys and sort of cannibalize these things into sculptures.
- [cuts back to him]
- Hillenburg: I have one right here, this one [he presses the button on the platform and the dog starts making agonizing noises], is this dog that I made out of some motor from some toys, he actually, barks a little bit, he's a little bit old right now so he's sounding tired.
- [cuts to a picture of CAL Arts]
- Hillenburg: I actually went up to Cal Arts and brought all my paintings with me [cuts back to him], I had no animation experience and, you know no films, and I met with Jules Engle who was the head of the experimental animation program there, and, he looked at my work and said "You belong here!", you know, immediately, and it totally changed my life.
- [cuts to footage of Wormholes]
- Hillenburg: My thesis film, was called Wormholes, and that was funded by the Princess Grace Foundation, Wormholes, was a attempt to depict relativity in a poetic way. I was trying to present this kind of complex scientific idea, in a way that was easy to understand.
- Joe Murray: I had a film accepted into the Ottawa Animation Festival [cuts to him], so I went into a screening of Wormholes and, I loved the style but it was extremely cerebral and conceptual and warped.