Behind the art of SpongeBob

by Allegra Frank

Over the last 25 years, SpongeBob SquarePants has earned a permanent place in popular culture. The Nickelodeon cartoon’s unique brand of cross-generational appeal — owed to both its absurdist humor and big-kid-at-heart sensibility — has been a constant cultural force since its 1999 premiere, even when the show’s actual quality has faltered. That ubiquity comes across, perhaps most overtly, online: Both SpongeBob and SpongeBob appear in everything from simple reaction images and GIFs to AI-generated original songs and, most famously, memes. Appropriate, considering the show came of age alongside the rest of us internet-addled millennials and zoomers. 

Yet the emphasis on SpongeBob’s memetic capabilities threatens to overshadow a crucial part of the show’s success, aside from the non-stop jokes and iconic characters: its gorgeously detailed illustrations. Thankfully, there’s a social media account spreading that gospel on a daily basis, and it’s quickly become a must-follow for nearly 90,000 people. The Art of SpongeBob is a treasure trove of SpongeBob minutia, celebrating the elegance and hilarity of the cartoon’s design. The account regularly shares high-quality stills from throughout the series’ 14 seasons, as well as fan art, clips, and even detailed, critical analysis of the show itself. (Case in point: their in-depth breakdown of Netflix’s new SpongeBob flick.) For those who have fallen off with the show — which wouldn’t be unfair, considering its prolonged dip in quality following the release of its first film in 2004 — it’s a great way to regain an appreciation for what makes SpongeBob such a long-lasting hit. 

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The Art of SpongeBob is currently run by 19-year-old super-fan Nat, who inherited the account from another mega-SpongeBob lover in 2020. As a curator, Nat is humble; he isn’t interested in developing a name for himself as the preeminent SpongeBob art historian. Yet his meticulously crafted archive is a thing of wonders, and he’s proven to hundreds of thousands of social media users why the show is an indelible cultural artifact. The Art of SpongeBob’s greatest strength is how it holds a microscope up to the show, spotlighting all the small things — an extremely detailed facial expression or background, or the evolution of a shot from storyboard to finished product — that explain why SpongeBob is a cut above its cartoon ilk.

Even though he wasn’t born until SpongeBob fell from peak critical favor, Nat has cultivated an encyclopedic knowledge of how the series is made, from the start of production to getting it on the air. If there’s anyone who knows why SpongeBob springs eternal, it’s him. EX Research spoke to Nat about why SpongeBob’s art is so entrancing and timeless, the series’ resonance with Very Online viewers, and the makings of a good SpongeBob meme.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

EX: First off – where do you find all of this great, high-resolution SpongeBob art? You have such an impressive collection!

Nat: While [Nickelodeon has] released a couple of digital scans themselves on the Nick Animation website, most of the publicly available production art has been found in unconventional places, one being specifically the development kit for the SuperSponge video game. It had an asset kit from Nickelodeon that was given to the game’s staff while making the game, and that game’s source code, audio, assets — the whole enchilada — was uploaded in full to the internet some time in 2016, so a lot of the more well-known paintings that have been circulating the internet for some time come from there. There is an official artbook, The SpongeBob SquarePants Experience, but prints like that will never be as nice as the actual digital scans.

EX: What do you think makes SpongeBob’s art particularly unique? 

Nat: The thing that makes SpongeBob’s art design unique, and really the show’s world in general, is that everything was thought-out and done with strong vision and intent by [SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg]. … I can remember something Hillenburg said in an interview or an article, to the effect of, “This isn’t just undersea animals living in a human world. This is a new undersea world lived in by sea creatures.” To me, that rings true in both the show’s world-building and its art. The flower clouds are an obvious example of a symbol that’s unique to SpongeBob; another is the sand textured by paint flecks, or the purple coral rocks that often decorate the background of scenes. … If you really open your eyes to the standard landscapes of SpongeBob, they are pretty alien compared to other cartoons, both before and after.

Everything is designed mindfully, and because of that, there’s a lot of unique iconography at every corner. When you look at prop designs, there’s just a whole new world of design opened up based on Polynesian and Hawaiian icons. ... Of course, this sentiment goes doubly for the character designs. SpongeBob himself has such a strange character design, if you single out all his traits. He has holes all over his face, eyelashes, a visible bottom lip, and buck teeth, but they all come together to form a very appealing character.

Strangely, I think him being a square really ties everything together, both design-wise and also character-wise. In Season 1 especially, SpongeBob is much more of a “nerd”-type character, enjoying this universe’s equivalent of bug collecting, being a prom failure, and harassing his comic book idols out of retirement. He really IS a square! If you look at the early sketches Stephen Hillenburg did of SpongeBob before he settled on his square shape, they don’t work nearly as well. The wide but simple variety of shapes the characters have make them easy to look at and very digestible, even if there’s a lot of stuff happening on top of those shapes. 

EX: Is there a specific scene or image you would consider emblematic of what makes the show’s art so special?

Nat: When thinking of SpongeBob’s art, the scene that always comes to mind for me is that scene in “Nature Pants” [from Season 1], when SpongeBob is dejectedly walking home from Jellyfish Fields. It’s practically just a slideshow of these beautiful, moody paintings, to the point where you almost forget that you’re watching a naked, talking sponge walk back to his house ... To me, that sums up SpongeBob’s general feel pretty well. 

The art design is uncompromising in its style, regardless of the fact that it’s a cartoon; nothing about it is standard or stock. I think part of the appeal of SpongeBob is its many juxtapositions: the juxtaposition of optimism with pessimism; the juxtaposition of these ridiculous characters and their mundane 9-5 jobs; and, in this case, the juxtaposition of a crazy scenario like the plot of “Nature Pants” and these beautiful paintings.

EX: How has SpongeBob’s art design evolved over time?

Nat: I think perceived changes in SpongeBob’s art style are less intentional stylistic changes and more so consequences of “changes in the guard.” SpongeBob, even early on, is a show that can look radically different from episode to episode. Much like when [animation studio] Rough Draft Korea animated Ren and Stimpy, I think it was a goal for the show to stick as closely to the boards as possible. With not a lot of full storyboards released from the show’s history, it’s really impossible to know how successful Rough Draft was in that mission, but early on in the show’s life, you can see that they had mixed results. In some episodes, they copy the style pretty well, and other times, the overseas directors’ own style is more obvious.

This is also still evident after the switch to a process called “digital ink and paint” in Season 2, in which the animation is still done on paper, but inked and colored digitally.  

In episodes such as “Dying for Pie” (to name one), SpongeBob’s features and overall design are variable because they stick closely to the storyboards by C.H. Greenblatt and Aaron Springer, and naturally storyboards aren’t going to be perfectly “on-model,” especially roughs.

Alternatively, in an episode like “Shanghaied,” still boarded by Greenblatt and Springer, SpongeBob’s design is much less variable and much “stiffer,” as it doesn’t follow the boards as closely. This is because the episode was likely handled by a different overseas director.

This is especially evident in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, in which the aforementioned Springer was a key player. Every character is so incredibly fun and variable in that movie, and it looks very different than the show did at the time, but in a fun way. Whether intentionally or not, after the movie, Rough Draft was a lot better at sticking to the boards from that point on.

After the first movie, Stephen Hillenburg and Derek Drymon stepped down as showrunners, and Paul Tibbitt was given the reins to the series. … Paul’s dedication to continuing Stephen’s artist driven vision can be felt in Season 4. Rough board drawings were cleaned up very similarly to how they were in the first movie, pretty much sticking as close to them as possible.

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Somewhere in Season 6 and especially Season 7, there is a turning point, and you can hardly even tell who boarded what in certain episodes, beyond certain traits from rough board drawings being haphazardly put on otherwise stiff and on-model drawings. The further the show gets from the movie, the more the roughs are significantly sterilized and stiffened up. In my opinion, Season 8 is by far the artistic low point in the show, with the strictest cleanup the show ever had. 

Lead character designer Todd White also left the team after the movie. Soon after, character designer Robertryan Cory joined the series. His art was unmistakably influenced by his time working at [Ren and Stimpy studio] Spumco, and he truly flexed his creative muscles in the show, designing some gnarly and detailed character designs. While it’s important to keep in mind that Cory was only designing and “fleshing” out (pun intended) what the storyboard artists drew in the first place, he was responsible for a lot of the more violent and “gross” drawings that come to mind when thinking of that era of the show. 

However, as we get further into the show, Cory’s credits get fewer and fewer. Season 8 was the last season he worked on, barring a few freelance jobs later on. Perhaps, this too, contributed to the show’s increasingly sanitized look. 

Like the first movie before it, the second movie [2015’s Sponge Out of Water] had many of the key players from the series at the time working on it, and a few returning staff as well — most notably, Stephen Hillenburg. Sherm Cohen, alongside Dave Cunningham and later Adam Paloian, all did significant work on the second movie; they’d later become supervising directors in the “post-sequel” era. 

After the second movie — emboldened by their ability to push the character drawings further — the studio appointed Vincent Waller and Marc Ceccarelli as showrunners, took on a lot of new artists, and established a new behind-the-scenes system. The show switched from being board-driven to script-driven; now, rather than being drawn and boarded directly from a brief outline, it is entirely scripted beforehand. So today, the script is written, handed off to a rough board artist, and then that rough board is given to one of the supervising directors. … Each director has a dedicated team of revisionists that revises (or “plusses”) the rough board. Many of these “plussing” artists were new to the series, young, and given a lot of freedom in terms of allowing their own sensibilities and styles to shine through. 

This is a very roundabout way to get back to the “art style evolution” question, because obviously this post-sequel era of SpongeBob looks very different from what came before. It’s very, very loose, and very, very faithful to the storyboards, which is a return to form to what it was like before the release of the first movie. Whether or not any given episode appeals to you will be dependent on whether or not you like the board artist’s own style.

EX: Who are some notable members of the show’s “post-sequel” era?

Nat: One such standout artist to me in this era was definitely Karl Hadrika, who always boarded dynamic and action-heavy scenes without them seeming too boring or flashy and distracting. Of course he did more than just action sequences, but that’s what jumps out most to me. I think SpongeBob looks better with unique and interesting character-acting and volumetric drawings, and Hadrika’s style hits on both of those points.

Another one of my favorite post-sequel SpongeBob artists is Benjamin Arcand. Arcand’s episodes always have very rich and distinct character acting, but maybe what I like most about them is that they aren’t afraid to take advantage of 3D space. That goes for both the revisions he does while plussing, but also the shot compositions he does on his own when given the opportunity to do rough boards. His style is also just very fun in general—very true to the characters and fun and loose without looking unappealing.

Benjamin Arcand on Instagram: “Some storyboards/montage sequence from “Spatula of the Heavens”, S13, [Outline by Luke Brooshier - Directed by Ian Vasquez]. Will probably post more from this one later on, if anybody cares ...🙃 Of course, this seq was influenced by the PILOT🔥 (**I added some random music on IG) #spongebobsquarepants #spongebobseason13 #spatula #spatulaoftheheavens #storyboard #animatic”

485 likes, 7 comments - crazybaloney on February 7, 2024: “Some storyboards/montage sequence from “Spatula of the Heavens”, S13, [Outline by Luke Brooshier - Directed by Ian Vasquez]. Will probably post more from this one later on, if anybody cares ...🙃 Of course, this seq was influenced by the PILOT🔥 (**I added some random music on IG) #spongebobsquarepants #spongebobseason13 #spatula #spatulaoftheheavens #storyboard #animatic”.

Instagram

Post-sequel SpongeBob, for a long time, had a consistent trio of rough board artists: John Trabbic, Brian Morante, and Fred Osmond. All three of them have very loose and fun styles, and depending on who plusses their boards, their styles come through very well alongside those who did the revisions. Arcand, for example, has done both rough boards and revisions in the past, and in both cases, his style is noticeable to those with keen eyes. 

While many make claims that post-sequel SpongeBob “looks like Ren and Stimpy” as a slight against the show, there is some truth in that statement. Vincent Waller, who worked on Ren and Stimpy up until it was handed off to Games Animation, is now one of the showrunners. Fred Osmond worked at Spumco as well much later, on The Ripping Friends and the infamous Ren and Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon. Kelly Armstrong and Bob Jacques, animation power couple, both worked on Ren and Stimpy while it was under Spumco, and also have lent their talents to SpongeBob in recent years. Bob Camp, one of the major players in the Spumco years of Ren and Stimpy, also found a home on SpongeBob and, later, The Patrick Star Show. Even Sherm Cohen was a layout artist on the later seasons of Ren and Stimpy! And that is just to list a few of the names directly associated with Spumco. Many younger artists now working on the show were no doubt inspired by Ren and Stimpy—or, even going back further, inspired by Bob Clampett’s Looney Tunes cartoons, which were the inspiration for Ren and Stimpy itself.

The show’s art and general sensibility has been changing up once again over the past few years in the wake of spin-offs and films, so much so to the point that many don’t even consider [the most recent seasons,] Seasons 13 and 14, to be grouped with the rest of the post-sequel era. One of the new big names of these past two seasons, Ian Vaquez, came from the The Cuphead Show, and his episodes are generally praised for having loose and fun animation by fans. Personally, I would agree that Seasons 13 and 14 have been different, but not to the point that I’d call them different from the rest of the post-sequel era. It is still run by Waller and Ceccarelli, after all.

EX: What can we learn about how the show itself has changed by looking at its art over time?

Nat: I do think that the changes in the artwork often match the changes in the writing and general tone as well. In Season 1, because of the cel animation, the colors are a little more subdued, but also the show is much more laidback and atmospheric, and those aesthetics blend together very very well. Season 2 and 3 are very artistically muddied to me, partially because of the stiffer animation of certain episodes, but when it’s done well, it still matches very well with the overall sensibilities of the show: It’s fun, but knows when to dial the funny drawings back and be a little bit more “chill.” 

Season 8 especially, maybe because of those boring drawings, is as dull as dishwater sometimes. I think earlier episodes can be saved by funny gags or funny drawings, but much of Season 8 is a bore. Whether or not you are a fan of the recent seasons, I don’t think “boring” is a word that can describe the bulk of their content! The art of the newer seasons definitely matches the show’s more “out-there” writing, and I don’t mean that as a knock against it. In isolation, or as clips on social media, it is easy to assume that the animation is just totally crazy for no reason, which is rarely the case.

EX: What’s the account’s most popular post?

Nat: Out of all my tweets, I believe the one with the most likes was me sharing a full SpongeBob comic story. It was a parody of 1984 with soviet aesthetics. … The SpongeBob comics are fantastic, and I think a lot of people have not read them. They were owned entirely by Stephen Hillenburg, and featured many of the artists and writers that left the show after the movie, such as Derek Drymon and Jay Lender. I’d encourage all who are fans of “classic SpongeBob” and want more of that type of humor and sensibility to read these comics.

EX: For those of us who grew up with the series, the memes are a part of its continued appeal. What about SpongeBob do you think lends itself well to memes?

Nat: That freeness and looseness in drawings that I mentioned earlier definitely helps, in terms of old-school memes that are just pictures with captions. Broad character acting and not being afraid to draw funny gives a lot of opportunity for them to turn into memes. The dialogue in the show is also just very clever and funny, at its best. There is a certain way characters talk and express themselves verbally that is very specific to SpongeBob in a way I can’t describe, right down to even the voice actors’ delivery. With so many episodes, SpongeBob has gone through the wringer (literally and figuratively), so there are countless situations he’s been in that can be turned into memes.

EX: What do you think makes for a good SpongeBob meme? What are your favorites?

Nat: I’ve never been too big of a fan of just regular SpongeBob memes (SpongeGar, “Imagination,” etc.), perhaps in part because Nickelodeon seems to have found its marketing niche with those sorts of memes that ran its course in 2016, but also just because they don’t really appeal to me for whatever reason. In terms of what makes me laugh, I like YouTube Poops and other absurd stuff like that. AbsoluteNutCase162’s comics, which are composed of screencaps from SpongeBob make me laugh a lot.

[Ed. note: Nickelodeon has indeed capitalized on the popularity of some of the most notable SpongeBob memes, releasing merch based on them – including an entire, expensive toy line.]

EX: Do you think that the fact that SpongeBob’s found a huge online audience through memes has informed its modern art style at all? Are there seemingly intentionally meme-worthy moments in new episodes?

Nat: I see people say this all the time in the replies to newer clips — at this point I would consider it a pet peeve. To me, the new art style is what more cartoons should be: unafraid to be driven by cartoonists and have silly drawings. If you look at an episode like “Dying for Pie,” like I mentioned earlier, it is incredibly variable and loose and silly-looking, with a ton of crazy faces and poses. I think the amount of stiffer episodes in those early seasons may have made people believe that’s what the show “should” look like, when, if anything, they are the exception to the rule. If you look at early SpongeBob, even in those stiffer episodes, they are filled with weird-looking and funny drawings. 

Does the new SpongeBob look a little crazy at times and have off-the-wall expressions? Yes. But it matches the writing, just like the pre-movie era’s animation did. The “styles” of both pre-movie and post-sequel SpongeBob complement the stories they tell.

When comparing old to new, again, I don’t think the approach or sensibility is much different. It’s still just artists drawing funny faces and poses because it’s fun! I think more shows would benefit from having fun and variable drawings. In terms of the writing, I don’t think that the sensibility of doing what makes the animators laugh has changed much either. There are still references to things kids won’t really understand (Popeye, The Beatles, etc.) in new episodes, and I am very thankful that executive interference seems to be minimal.

EX: Why do you think the Art of SpongeBob account resonates with people the way it does? I discovered it myself because of people constantly sharing posts from it on my timeline!

Nat: I think this account resonates with people simply because SpongeBob resonates with people. It may seem hyperbolic, but I genuinely believe SpongeBob is this generation’s Bugs Bunny. SpongeBob is timeless and, above all, has aged remarkably well, so it will continue to stick with adults far past the last time they actually watch new episodes or even cartoons in general. Most of the art I share happens to be from the seasons most adults remember well, so I think that helps as well. There is definitely a section of people that follow because they’re interested broadly in animation or production art … I don’t think there are 80,000 hardcore SpongeBob nerds on Twitter.

Allegra Frank is a senior culture editor at The Atlantic.

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