SpongeBob Premiere Promo Postcard 1999

Another buried treasure uncovered from the box at the bottom of the closet: A promotional postcard promoting the series premiere of SpongeBob SquarePants on July 17, 1999 (although there was one sneak episode released earlier in May of '99.) SpongeBob's design matured a lot over the first few seasons. I drew this image during the first season, but it sure looks wonky to me now!

SpongeBob Comics: “Hiccup and Away”

Here's a SpongeBob comic book story which I wrote and drew  for Nickelodeon Magazine in 2002 -- during the break between the series' 3rd Season and the Movie: "Hiccup and Away!"


Click on any image to read the full-size comic page

The REAL Story Behind the SpongeBob Phenomenon

Cartoon historian Tom Heintjes is sharing the results of his wonderful new project; a comprehensive oral history of the SpongeBob SquarePants show. Tom interviewed many many key players who were with the show from the very beginning. The best part of this HUGE article is that the discussions dig down into the nitty gritty of the way the show was put together.

Interviewees include Tom Kenny (voice of SpongeBob), Creative Director Derek Drymon, Supervising Director Alan Smart, Storyboard Artist/Writers Paul Tibbitt, Erik Wiese, Jay Lender, Mark O'Hare, Kent Osbourne, Sam Henderson, Kaz, myself, background designer Kenny Pittinger, and many other talented people where were part of the creative process that turned a silly little sponge into a timeless cartoon series and unexpected pop-culture phenomenon.

There are a bunch of rare visuals scattered throughout, including rare pre-production sketches and pics of in-the-trenches day-to-day life on the SpongeBob crew. Check it all out at:

http://cartoonician.com/2012/09/the-oral-history-of-spongebob-squarepants/

SpongeBob Cover Process Sketches

Last year I had the pleasure of drawing and painting the cover for the first issue of SpongeBob Comics (see above).

Being the first issue, there was a LOT of behind-the-scenes work – we all wanted to give this cover a lot of impact! Here’s a look at some of the various sketches that I drew in the process of developing the cover…


Click on the images above to get a bigger look at all those little sketches.

Here’s a look at the finished pencil art (below)…

…and in the next few days I’ll be going into more detail with a lot more raw sketches from the SpongeBob Comics cover project. Check back soon for more

SpongeBob Comics #1 Cover Art

It’s finally here! Today is the release date for the very first issue of SpongeBob Comics! I’m very proud to say that I drew and painted the cover art for this baby!

Here is the original pencil version… Here’s the inked version below:
…and finally the fully-painted artwork below. Completely logo-free,
but still with the crop marks and bleed lines and all that jazz.

In the next few days I’m also gonna be posting the TON of rejected preliminary drawings from this project. There’s a lot of drawings that I really like a lot, but for one reason or another they were all passed over for the version you see above. So come back soon and check ‘em out!

And meanwhile,
I hope you’ll all go out to your
local comics shop and pick up a copy of
SpongeBob Comics #1

Some old SpongeBob doodles on a scrap of illustration board

Click on image for full-size SpongeBob doodle

As much as I hate sketching in sketchbooks, I LOVE doing doodles on oddly-shaped pieces of stuff. Anything with a writing surface. Newspapers are good. I also have an old "Voter Information" publication with a lotta sketches inside. I like doodling on newsprint with a roller-ball pen. My current fave rollerball is the Bic 730R. You can get 'em at Staples. Oh, and I'm also doodling in a copy of the expired TAG union contract. So? I dunno.

I prolly drew this during the third or fourth season of SpongeBob. I've always liked drawing SpongeBob...he really makes me happy ^_^ Sketched with a PITT artists Pen - brush tip. One of my favorite drawing tools.

Hope you like it!

Giant SpongeBob Wall Painting

Here's a 12-foot tall wall painting I designed for Nickelodeon Studios back in 2005

------------------

This is the original Inked art (I didn't work in color back then)

--------------

Here’s an earlier version
which was considered too busy:

…I guess it WAS a little too busy.

---------------------

...and here's Sherm proudly mugging for the camera!

-------------------

More storyboarding tutorials coming soon!

• Storyboarding Commentary series:
• #1 - Storyboard Scans and Overview
• #2 - The Establishing Shot
• #3 – The Pan Shot
• #4 – When to Cut
• #5 - Staging and Design
• #6 - The Close-Up
• #7 – The Three-Shot

SpongeBob Hangover

A few fun storyboard panels from
“The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie.”

I usually just made black and white xeroxes of my boards,
but I liked the way the colors looked on these, so I scanned 'em in color.

In case you haven’t seen the movie, SpongeBob goes on an ice cream bender after getting passed over for a promotion at the Krusty Krab. When he wakes up the next morning, he’s pretty ornery!

Aaron Springer did the original rough sketches for this scene, so I had some great art to start with!

Some of my SpongeBob Comics – Super Suspicion

Here’s a SpongeBob comic book story I did for Nickelodeon Magazine back in ought-two. This was done during the break between the end of SpongeBob’s 3rd season and before production started on the Movie.

It was fun ‘cause I finally had a chance to get back to my comic book roots, and reach a huge audience, too.

Story, pencils and lettering by me,
inked by Vince Deporter, coloring by Digital Chameleon.

Anyway, just click on any image to open up a HUGE high-resolution comic page.

I’m not sure why, but I’ve never posted any of my Nick Mag comics before. Oh, wait…I remember why. I was still freelancing for Nickelodeon Magazine and I didn’t wanna make  them mad. But last December the magazine shut its doors, so here they are.

^ That was a fun panel to draw!

I’m always fond of bookending the opening and closing panels
(or scenes in a cartoon)

A lot of these comics were collected
into book form: Comic Crazy!

Click HERE to see more on the book
--------------------
Wanna see more of these SpongeBob comics stories? I’ll post some more if you let me know in the comments. Talk to you soon! --Sherm

Storyboarding Process – How Clean is “Clean?” – Thumbnails, Roughs and Storyboard Clean-up Examples

One of the questions I’m often asked by storyboarding students is “How clean does a cleaned-up storyboard have to be?”

 

The two drawings above show the difference between the cleaned-up storyboard drawing (drawn with 3B pencil on standard copy-grade storyboard paper) and the rough drawing (done in ball-point pen on a Post-It note). It’s usually fine to let some of the construction lines show through on the finals. You can’t quite see it with these scans, but there are faint sketch lines visible on all the clean-up drawings shown here.

(These storyboard drawings are from a Burger King commercial in 2005. BK was giving out SpongeBob watches, and this was the commercial promoting them.)

 

For the examples above, the rough was drawn with a Pitt brush-marker on Post-It note, then finished with 3B pencil.

----------------------------------------

Here’s a tiny Post-it thumbnail (above) followed by marker rough, followed by the final storyboard drawing.

 

As usual, the drawing with the most life is the rough. It’s hard to keep that energy when you clean it up, but that’s the eternal challenge!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The clean-ups shown here are actually cleaner than we usually draw for storyboards. Since these were done for an advertising campaign, I had to make sure that they looked as close to “finished art” as possible because they were being looked at by non-animation people. I wanted to show them here to demonstrate the extremes of roughs to clean-ups.

 

This is a good example of not drawing lots of detail until you know that the shot works. There’s no way I’m going to waste my time drawing all those falling Krabby Patties until the final drawing (below).

Click on any of these drawings to see a BIG full-sized scan!

---------------------------------

 

-----------------------------------------------

    

If you click on the drawing below (to see the larger version) you’ll be able to see lots of construction lines on the characters and perspective lines going through the background. These are totally acceptable in any storyboard clean-up! This is as clean as I have ever drawn (except for the SpongeBob Movie because we had so much time on that project to make the drawings perfect).

If you’re interested in learning how to storyboard, check out my two-hour long DVD workshop called “Storyboard Elements” Just click on the DVD for a free preview and to find out more!

Next time I’ll post the entire storyboard for the commercial in thumbnails, roughs and cleanups for comparison. See you then!