***I only drew the character for this image. Credit for the Background Painting goes to Nick Jennings, our amazing Art Director for the original run.
Fashion designer Marc Jacobs has this drawing tattooed on his arm. So… that happened.
My very first job, right out of College, was on a small, quirky new show over at Nickelodeon in the fall of 1999.
“SpongeBob SquarePants” had just started airing and was doing surprisingly well in the ratings. I came on to the show as a Storyboard Revisionist at the very tail end of season 1 and worked on storyboards all the way through seasons 2 and 3. It was a great crew. We had a lot of fun and we were all very fond of the show. But I don’t think anybody had an inkling of the impact of what we were working on. What incredible luck and privilege to be a part of such a global cultural phenomenon.
As one of the only artists on the production with print work experience (from my days in graphic design), I was quickly inundated with requests to do SpongeBob illustration work.
Steve Hillenburg was very picky about the way SpongeBob should look, so I got to work very closely with him on these projects, learning all the little quirks about the character that were important to him.
I drew this particular pose of SpongeBob around the middle of season 2 for promotional purposes. I had no idea at the time that it would become one of the most iconic images of the character.
Interesting side note: this drawing would probably not be considered “on model” by the standards of the current production. Character designs always evolve over time as shows progress. We were already drawing him quite differently by the time of the original SpongeBob Movie. I honestly don’t know what the rules are now. When I watch the new episodes it doesn’t even look like the same show I used to work on.
