Stephen Hillenburg,SpongeBob Creator died at 57
Stephen Hillenburg, a SpongeBob SquarePants died Monday at age 57, Nickelodeon has announced this news.
He said that in March 2017, Stephen was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, which is also known as ALS. Stephen’s death came few weeks after the death of another cartooning hero, Stan Lee, Marvel creator.
Hillenburg conceived, wrote, directed and produced animated series that started in 1999 and went to spawn a Broadway show, movies and hundreds of episodes.
“Hillenburg was a long-time creative partner and beloved friend to everyone at Nickelodeon,” Nickelodeon’s statement said.
The jolly SpongeBob, his starfish Patrick, and a vast cast of the oceanic creatures that quickly appealed to the parents and college kids.
“The fact is that it is an undersea and isolated from our world that helps characters to maintain their own culture,” Hillenburg told The Associated Press in the year 2001.
Hillenburg was born at his father’s army post in Lawton, Okla., and was graduated from The Humboldt State University in California in the year 1984 with a degree in natural resource planning that emphasis on the marine resources. Then he to teach marine biology at Orange County Marine Institute.
After this, he shifted to drawing and earned a master degree in fine arts in animation from the California Institute of the Arts in the year 1992.
In that same year, he created Wormholes, an animated short that won festival plaudits and helped him to land for a job on the Rocko’s Modern Life, Nickelodeon show, where he worked from 1993 – 1996 before he started to build the SpongeBob’s undersea world of Bikini Bottom.
