How The Design Of Spongebob Has Changed Over The Years

Krusty Krab home of the krabby patty with a Help Wanted sign in the window for years I've been dreaming of this moment there's a term in animation I find really interesting Flanders ation it's defined as the act of taking a single often minor action or trait of a character within a work and exaggerating it more and more over time until it completely consumes the character and it got me thinking about this guy and how dramatically his design and how he's animated has changed over the years but to understand that we had to take a look all the way back to this this is SpongeBob's initial design it's fairly predictable and coincidentally follows a few specific principles of animation Stephen Hillenburg was teaching marine biology to children when he created a comic about sea life which included Bob the sponge his love for marine biology clashing with his love for animation when the comic went unpublished Hillenburg would work his way up through the animation ranks on shows like Rocko's Modern Life before crafting an idea for his own show he took Bob the sponge and turned him into sponge boy for a show titled sponge boy ahoy after very smartly retitling the show thanks to a competing cleaning product of the same name this initial version of Sponge Bob was born an animation there are a few principles that are taught to students and had held true and practice for decades if you want to make your character cuter make them rounder large teeth can be intimidating or ridiculous so often they're saved for side-characters squares boxes and point your characters are reserved for villains because well actually science according to the Barrow Neurological Institute round characters round edges are ingrained in us to be treated more fondly than those without them spun Bob's core design as a square with sharp SquarePants in circular holes could not care less about any event spongebob was in season 1 and in this always has been a paradox a holy rectangular wavy mix of geometric nonsense and in season one this was awesome season one is the only season to be animated using cel animation exclusively meaning animators and artists had to draw almost every frame of each episode by hand it shows in SpongeBob's design this season there's human error present he's not always the exact same amount of square his shape shifts every time you see him you see a new version of him he was free to be molded each and every frame unfortunately the cel animation brought with it a darker look gland her backgrounds and more expensive episodes so SpongeBob's design and approach would happen to change of the sponge sheer would undergo quite a few changes in season two and it's here where that blander ization I'm going to mention a few more times lays its roots spongebob was switched to digital animation in season 2 his design would become cleaner it would lose a lot of the human error that comes with sale animation but in totality this design and his changes for great and this stuff would start happening you can thanks eh Greenblatt for that during this season he became intimately involved in quite a few episodes and it was his style that slowly molded the sheer insanity of SpongeBob's squishy expressiveness Greenblatt would draw spongebob is a vehicle for emotion unless so is a structure of features but we'll come back to Greenblatt soon oh and season 2 also saw the introduction of SpongeBob's new cheeks quickly and other season passes by and the spongebob movie is created after season 3 this film saw spongebob begin a rapid to change SpongeBob's design and the film was bright it was expressive it was the peak of squash and stretch and thanks to a bigger budget it was played with in Wei Zhou daeun PSA's had never seen but there was also this [Music] [Applause] [Music] now this little piece is just conjecture but the goofy goober moment was huge it led the movies marketing campaign it spawned a viral song and led merchandising in stores buts it painted spongebob moments as a goofy perpetually knit witted kid as opposed to the goofy sometimes nitwit a kid we had seen before the film while the rest of the film returns spongebob to the character we all knew and loved what happened after wasn't quite the same show's creator Stephen Hillenburg would leave the show after the movie in season four would see SpongeBob's design shift in that very goober ish direction and season four spongebob got larger pupils to amp up his cuteness backgrounds got brighter and spongebob got a bit more rectangular this is coincided with a shift in personality spongebob became increasingly well stupid and for some this was funny but after this season well it became who he was all the time so for others this change was not as humorous around the time season four had ended spongebob will begin to lose all hints of intelligence in favor of a more slapstick approach his design as you'll see he would follow suit however staying in place at season four for a moment ch Greenblatt will come into direct fear of the krabby patty [Music] a master class an animated expression turning SpongeBob's design into an easel for him to paint on and paints Greenblatt did but he too would leave Sponge Bob staff near the end of season 4 and with that season 5 of Sponge Bob would see a regime change and a design change as well it was this season where Sponge Bob went full on digital animation as opposed to just the inking and painting being done digitally and the Flanders ation would continue this Montross design would become progressively manic while his literal body and animation will become stiffer in season 5 picture a cardboard box with eyes and a mouth that moves like a human's and now give the box legs that is where Sponge Bob would head throughout season 5 but this new stiff oddly expressive design would make itself clearest in season 6 here he gets smaller eyes while mostly retaining his pupil size he'd get larger eyelashes and his cheeks would get even chubbier in an attempt to maybe recreate the magic of Hillenburg and CH Greenblatt SpongeBob's malleable face had consumed his entire design he became cute in exclusivity Dumber in character and dumbed down in design and seemed to be geared more and more towards a younger crowd than originally intended constantly crying or laughing in a pool of his own stupidity with no in-between and it was no secret either this design is considered by bands to be some of the worst designs in the show's history season six saw Sponge Bob turned into an exaggerated cutesy caricature of himself a design that carried into season seven Dorothee season spongebob wasn't alone in the stiffness and the changes or in the personalities Patrick's only Redemption quickly became the few moments where he said something intelligent and Squidward scowl became an almost permanent fixture his ability to emot-- his ability to express himself reserved to a very few infrequent moments these seasons saw a character in both design and writing that had for some reason lost its way spongebob Hatteberg got in what spongebob was the Flanders ation completed but then came SpongeBob's biggest change since well maybe it's inception and it was for the better this is spongebob Season nine design redesigned for the better after spongebob sponge out of water a movie that quite literally revived a hint of the character in its design brights colorful and far better looking the previous version of himself audience had seen the past couple of years that movie that design change just so happened to coincide with Stephen Hillenburg return to the franchise helping lead the charge on the film and ensuing season so why all the changes is there a pattern to be seen here well I asked myself the same thing but I think the answer lies in animation itself spongebob was the idea of one man a man who created this character who loved him gave him life no one understood spongebob better than Stephen Hillenburg and if you did get close to CH Greenblatt's of the world but there's a clear line after Ilyn Berg's departure and another at his return and there's a reason for that me the door animators and creators are the stars of animation they are their characters in so many more ways than in live-action and when you lose their touch or their insight you essentially rip the heart right out of those very creations you can't recast spongebob and you certainly can't recreate the magic crafted by the magician that conjured him up flâneur ization occurs because creatives are asked by networks to try to replicate and understand things on a level that maybe no one is capable of outside of a couple individuals spongebob became consumed by chasing that original Hillenburg magic if you're an animator always remember that every character is a part of you doesn't matter if anyone else gets it no one got Bob the sponge at first either don't chase don't Flanders create what you feel whether that means for getting the animation staples of the past or creating a talking sponge because that's what art is expression and no one seemed to know that better than Stephen that is a wrap on today's episode of nerd stall geing if you enjoyed the video and want to see more content like this video on the channel press the like button you see down below also right next to it is the subscribe button if you want to make sure you see every video I put out here press subscribe and on your screen right now are two more episodes opener install Jing and I'll see you guys in the next video

Channel: Nerdstalgic

Views: 1,080,940

Rating: 4.944541 out of 5

Keywords: spongebob squarepants, spongebob, spongebob episodes, spongebob squarepants episodes, best spongebob, cartoon, nickelodeon, nerdstalgic

Id: uBQJ9iYUgoU

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019