Stephen Hillenburg

Stephen Hillenburg grew up in Anaheim fascinated by the ocean and began teaching marine biology at the Orange County Marine Institute in 1984, where he wrote and illustrated The Intertidal Zone to explain tide-pool animals to students. After two years he enrolled at CalArts in 1989 to study animation, and his student short films earned him a job on Rocko's Modern Life in 1993. In 1994 he started adapting his Intertidal Zone characters into SpongeBob SquarePants, which Nickelodeon launched in 1999 and has aired continuously since. He directed the 2004 movie intending it as a finale, then steppe…