Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1257506
D E PA R T M E N T 39 KEYFRAME Images courtesy of Paramount the same," Hill says. "So the idea, for me, was [to] make really dimensional backgrounds without making it seem like it's not SpongeBob." It was also important to find a way for the film to pay homage to SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg, who passed away from heart failure associated with ALS in 2018. Hill, whose relationship with Hillenburg dates back to the 1990s Nickelodeon hit Rocko's Modern Life, says the film's plot—SpongeBob is looking for his lost pet, Gary the Snail—was something that the late creator "always thought would be a good premise for a movie." Hill says Hillenburg also "didn't really like to do scripts" and would "organize ideas from storyboard development." Hill says the Sponge on the Run crew was made up of artists from the television show to help "keep a lot of that ethos going." But he also hired talent new to the brand who could come to it with a fresh perspective. This includes Rachel Tiep-Daniels, who has earned her first credit as a production designer thanks to this film. She says she wasn't a SpongeBob superfan before she was hired, although she—of course— knew about the show and films and "very much appreciated" them. She says coming onto the project with fresh eyes, especially since it was transitioning to CG, allowed her to "really dissect it in a different way." Tiep-Daniels says that, while it was important to "keep everything grounded in the foundation and original style of SpongeBob" the TV series, she and the team also "created rules of color, patterns, shape, and style for everything in the film." This meant that she could make the exterior of SpongeBob's dwelling, the infamous pineapple under the sea, a "hybrid of a realistic texture and sculpted elements." She says there's a gradient "for the representation of color and light of the overall base of the pineapple [which starts] from the outside going in" with red shadowing to orange and then to yellow, which she says is the most exposed. This final color layer "applied on top of the base surfacing of the pineapple" was a "detail that helped keep it familiar to the show and cartoony." "In the TV show, they use the gradient of color to indicate light and shadow," Tiep-Daniels adds. "I found without this treatment layer, it was either too simple, or it could look too much like a realistic pineapple." this page, top: Concept art by Francisco Mora; below: CG versions of SpongeBob and Gary share a meal. SUMMER 2020 39