The Crusty Crab, home of the Crabby Patty, with a help
wanted sign in the window.
For years I've been dreaming of this moment.
I'm going to go in there, march straight to the manager,
looking straight in the eye and the line, and I can't do this!
There's a term in animation I find really interesting.
Flanderization.
It's defined as the act of taking a single, often
minor action or trait of a character within a work,
and exaggerating it more and more over time
until it completely consumes the character.
And it got me thinking about this guy,
and how dramatically his design and how he's animated
has changed over the years.
But to understand that, we have to take a look
all the way back to this.
This is SpongeBob's initial design.
It's fairly predictable, and coincidentally,
follows a few specific principles of animation.
Stephen Hillenburg was teaching marine biology
to children when he created a comic about sea
life, which included Bob, the Sponge.
His love for marine biology clashing
with his love for animation.
When the comic went unpublished, Hillenburg
would work his way up through the animation ranks
on shows like Rocko's Modern Life,
before crafting an idea for his own show.
He took Bob the Sponge and turned him
into Sponge Boy for a show titled Sponge Boy Ahoy.
After very smartly retitling the show,
thanks to a competing cleaning product of the same name,
this initial version of SpongeBob was born.
Today's the big day, Gary.
In animation, there are a few principles
that are taught to students and had held true in practice
for decades.
If you want to make your character cuter,
make them rounder.
Large teeth can be intimidating or ridiculous,
so often they're saved for side characters.
Squares, boxes, and [INAUDIBLE] characters
are reserved for villans because, well, actually,
science.
According to the Barrow Neurological Institute,
round characters, round edges, are ingrained in us
to be treated more fondly than those without them.
SpongeBob's core design as a square
with sharp square pants and circular holes
could not care less about any of that.
SpongeBob was in, season one, and in this way,
always has been a paradox.
A holey, rectangular, wavy mix of geometric nonsense.
And in season one, this was awesome.
I'm ready!
Who's ready?
I'm ready!
Season one is the only season to be animated
using cell animation exclusively,
meaning animators and artist had to draw almost every frame
of each episode by hand.
It shows in SpongeBob's design this season.
There's human error present.
He's not always the exact same amount of square.
His shape shifts.
Every time you see him, you see a new version of him.
He was free to be molded each and every frame.
Unfortunately, the cell animation
brought with it a darker look, blander backgrounds,
and more expensive episodes.
So SpongeBob's design and approach would have to change.
Bob the Sponge here would undergo quite a few changes
in season two, and it's here where
that flanderization I'm going to mention a few more times
lays its roots.
SpongeBob was switched to digital animation
in season two.
His design would become cleaner.
It would lose a lot of the human error that
comes with cell animation.
But in totality, this design and its changes were great,
and this stuff would start happening.
I'm not always as confident as I look.
You can thank C.H. Greenblatt for that.
During this season he became intimately involved
in quite a few episodes, and it was
his style that slowly molded the sheer insanity of SpongeBob's
squashy expressiveness.
Greenblatt would draw SpongeBob as a vehicle for emotion,
and less so as a structure of features.
But we'll come back to Greenblatt soon.
Oh, and season two also saw the introduction of SpongeBob's new
cheek's.
Quickly another season passes by,
and the SpongeBob movie is created after season three.
This film saw SpongeBob begin a rapid change.
SpongeBob's design in the film was bright, it was expressive,
it was the peak of squash and stretch.
And thanks to a bigger budget, it
was played with in ways audiences had never seen.
But there was also this sequence of events.
Oh Mr. Waiter.
Two more, please!
Wooh!
Waiter!
Now this little piece is just conjecture,
but the goofy goober moment was huge.
It led the movie's marketing campaign.
It spawned a viral song, and led merchandising in stores.
But it painted SpongeBob for a moment
as a goofy, perpetually nitwitted kid,
as opposed to the goofy, sometimes
nitwitted kid we had seen before the film.
While the rest of the film returned SpongeBob
to the character we all knew and loved, well,
what happened after wasn't quite the same.
Show's creator Steven Hillenburg would leave the show
after the movie, and season four would
see SpongeBob's design shift in that very gooberish direction.
In season four, SpongeBob got larger pupils
to amp up his cuteness.
Backgrounds got brighter, and SpongeBob
got a bit more rectangular.
This coincided with a shift in personality.
SpongeBob became increasingly, well, stupid.
And for some, this was funny.
But after this season, well, it became who he was all the time.
So for others this change was not as humorous.
Around the time season four had ended,
SpongeBob would begin to lose all hints of intelligence
in favor of a more slapstick approach.
His design, as you'll see, would follow suit.
However, staying in place at season for a moment,
C.H. Greenblatt will come in ti direct Fear of the Crabby
Patty.
[SCREAMING]
Holy shrimp!
They're everywhere!
A masterclass in animated expression
turning SpongeBob's design into an easel for him to paint on.
And paint, Greenblatt did.
But he too would leave SpongeBob's staff
near the end of season four.
And with that, season five of SpongeBob
would see a regime change, and a design change as well.
It was this season where SpongeBob
went full on digital animation, as opposed to just the inking
and painting being done digitally,
and the flanderization would continue.
SpongeBob's design would become progressively manic,
while his literal body and animation would become stiffer
in season five.
Picture a cardboard box, with eyes
and a mouth that moves like a human's, and now
give the box legs.
That is where SpongeBob would head throughout season five.
But this new, stiff, oddly expressive design
would make itself clearest in season six.
Here he gets smaller eyes, while mostly retaining his pupil
size.
He'd get larger eyelashes and his cheeks
would get even chubbier.
In an attempt to maybe recreate the magic of Hillenburg
and C.H. Greenblatt, SpongeBob's malleable face
had consumed his entire design.
He became cute in exclusivity, dummer in character,
and dumbed down in design, and seemed
to be geared more and more towards a younger
crowd than originally intended.
Constantly crying or laughing in a pool of his own stupidity,
with no in between.
And it was no secret either.
This design is considered by fans
to be some of the worst designs in the show's history.
Season six saw SpongeBob turned into an exaggerated, cutesy,
caricature of himself--
a design that carried into season seven.
Maybe you should start acting a little more normal!
[SHOUTING]
I'm not normal?
Throughout the season, SpongeBob wasn't alone in the stiffness,
in the changes, or in the personalities.
Patrick's only redemption quickly became the few moments
where he said something intelligent,
and Squidward's scowl became an almost permanent fixture.
His ability to emote, his ability to express himself,
reserved to a very few infrequent moments.
These seasons saw a character in both design and writing
that had for some reason lost its way.
SpongeBob had forgotten what SpongeBob was.
The flandarization completed.
I lost something once.
I lost something I couldn't live without.
My identity.
But then came SpongeBob's biggest change since, well,
maybe, it's inception.
And it was for the better.
This is SpongeBob's season nine design.
Redesigned for the better after SpongeBob's Sponge out
of Water, a movie that quite literally
revived a hint of the character in its design.
Bright, colorful, and far better looking the previous version
of himself audience had seen the past couple of years.
That movie, that design change, just so
happened to coincide with Steven Hillenburg's return
to the franchise, helping lead the charge
on the film and ensuing season.
So why all the changes?
Is there a pattern to be seen here?
Well, I asked myself the same thing.
But I think the answer lies in animation itself.
SpongeBob was the idea of one man.
A man who created this character, who loved him,
who gave him life.
No one understood SpongeBob better than Stephen Hillenburg.
And a few did get close, the C.H. Greenblatt's of the world.
But there's a clear line after Hillenburg's departure,
and another at his return.
And there's a reason for that.
I'll draw me, and when Squidward answers the door,
it won't be me.
Animators and creators are the stars of animation.
They are their characters in so many more
ways than in live action.
And when you lose their touch or their insight,
you essentially rip the heart right out
of those very creations.
You can't recast SpongeBob, and you certainly
can't recreate the magic crafted by the magician that
conjured him up.
Flanderization occurs because creatives are asked by networks
to try to replicate and understand things
on a level that maybe no one is capable of outside of a couple
individuals.
SpongeBob became consumed by chasing
that original Hillenburg magic.
If you're an animator, always remember that every character
is a part of you.
It doesn't matter if anyone else gets it.
No one got Bob the Sponge at first either.
Don't chase.
Don't flanderize.
Create what you feel, whether that
means forgetting the animation staples of the past
or creating a talking sponge, because that's what art is.
Expression.
And no one seemed to know that better than Stephen.
How high is he gonna go?
All the way, Patrick.
Up to the great beyond.
Goodbye, friend.
Happy trails.
That is a wrap on today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
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