🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (12 tweets)
curious about the history of Spongebob Squarepants. Its creator Stephen Hillenburg sadly died in 2018 aged 57, from ALS He was inspired by Jacques Cousteau's oceanography as a kid, became marine biologist Oh and he worked as a fry cook after high school... of course https://t.co/SkhF4K8mTS
he went thru the classic "should I pursue my art or my more proper job" dilemma. initially he did his undergrad in "natural-resource planning and interpretation, with an emphasis on marine resources", became a school teacher for a bit... https://t.co/vAgsvasizS
then he got a job at the Ocean Institute, where, besides being an educator inspiring kids, he also created The Intertidal Zone... I find it beautiful to see how it all comes together. This is what it takes to make Spongebob. Like how Spielberg made a proto-ET before ET https://t.co/EuTgqKjc2v
in 1987, aged ~26, after attending some festivals, Stephen left his job to become an animator. Enrolled in a CalArts program, studied under his "art dad" Jules Engel, founding director who was impressed by The Intertidal Zone. Jules (Budapest-born!) had worked on Fantasia, Bambi https://t.co/Rk4u2PtiQx
Here's one of Stephen's first works, The Green Beret (1991), about a Girl Scout who's a little too powerful for her own good. Interesting to watch this knowing that it's the predecessor to Spongebob https://t.co/J0atxaSaOR
then he got his first professional job in the animation world as a director on Rocko's Modern Life (1993-1996), Nickelodeon's first in-house cartoon production. He also produced, wrote and storyboarded some episodes, served as exec story editor... https://t.co/pgFPsdiwZV
Hillenburg: "I don't know if this is true for everybody else, but it always seems like, for me, I'll start thinking about something and it takes about ten years to actually have it happen, or have someone else believe in it... It took me a few years to get Spongebob together." https://t.co/izaUACKKum
funnily occurring to me right now, in a meta way, one of my things is I keep reading and researching all these stories and finding all these similar patterns that seem so obvious to me, that'll probably be a part of whatever my Spongebob is in 20 years https://t.co/5FgDkoRZEp
the obvious pattern to me that i see in all sorts of successful people in all sorts of domains: - know what your interests are, the things that you'll be doing all your life even if it never blows up - get involved with "industry", whatever the industry is. seek peers, mentors
- work on your own solo projects, have some sort of portfolio you can show off. a film reel, a youtube channel, essays, whatever - try and get involved in bigger projects with other people, work on bigger shared things, build good relationships with those people
that's basically it, really!! it's the same story every time! build assets (completed projects), cultivate a reputation (real relationships with real people). address each piece of the puzzle separately then bring it all together https://t.co/vCNVlQrx18
was just looking up joe rogan's history recently. fear factor was a nice big break for him. how did he get that? well, first he did a bunch of standup comedy, which helped him get some tv experience. ever heard of this tv show? he also hung around ufc so much they gave him a mic https://t.co/y7T4pJH7Pn
you might not know how it'll all come together, sometimes you're just keeping things going waiting for something in the world to happen that you don't know yet. Sony was just a radio repair shop until the transistor was invented https://t.co/gcZPJ3TyZW
IMO, Sony 1945-1955 was basically a group of highly-motivated tech nerds struggling to do whatever they needed to do just to exist as a company. Sure, they made *some* money selling tape recorders (new tech at the time), but what they were REALLY doing, without realizing it... https://t.co/Q6GOsJC5HN
