0:00

I said, Steve, whatever you want to change, like,

0:02

we don't want to mess with SpongeBob too

0:04

much, Like I want to make sure it all still fits in

0:06

the world that you created. And he said,

0:09

I've done everything I want to do with SpongeBob.

0:11

I want you guys to do what you do with SpongeBob.

0:14

What a great guy, SEUs.

0:37

Welcome to SpongeBob binge Pants,

0:39

Nickelodeon's official podcast about

0:41

all things SpongeBob. I'm Hector Navarro

0:44

and I'm Frankie Grandang. We have an

0:46

incredibly special episode

0:48

for you today that requires

0:50

a little bit of historical context

0:53

since SpongeBob square Pants started

0:55

all the way to today, SpongeBob, along

0:57

with the Patrick Star Show are still animated

1:00

on pencil and paper and then they're scanned to

1:02

be colored digitally. They're animated

1:05

at rough Draft Korea, though technically only

1:07

season one of SpongeBob was sell animated

1:09

and painted. This process,

1:12

combined with hand painted backgrounds

1:14

and using X sheets for timing direction,

1:16

is increasingly increasingly rare

1:19

in the animation world, and it's part

1:21

of the reason why SpongeBob and The Patrick

1:23

Star Show have such beautiful

1:25

cartoon looks to them. Yes. So

1:28

stop motion animation feels

1:30

kind of like the spiritual sibling to SpongeBob's

1:33

traditional animation style in

1:35

that it's another very labor intensive

1:37

process where extreme artistry

1:39

and detail is put into every

1:42

single frame. So using

1:44

stop motion animation for specific SpongeBob

1:47

gags, holiday specialist moments in the movies,

1:50

and various shorts on the Patrick Star Show

1:52

seems like a total no brainer. You're

1:54

right, Frankie, and it's a no brainer, And so is

1:56

the no brainer of us talking to some

1:58

of the creative genius is behind the stop

2:01

motion animation of the SpongeBob

2:03

universe from screen novelties.

2:06

We're talking to Shamus Walsh

2:08

and Mark gabbaetto. Let's

2:10

do it here we go. I'd

2:16

love to start by understanding

2:19

what type of person does it take to be able to be that

2:21

patient to make stop motion animation? This

2:23

is marked. I think a lot of stop motion animators

2:26

start off by being highly influenced

2:29

by something that they saw as a kid, either

2:31

at being Rudolf Rends Reindeer or

2:34

King Kong, or like the old Harry House

2:36

in movies, like you know that this weird

2:38

figure exists, that you can go and

2:41

grab it and you want

2:43

it, you want to play with that, and the way it has

2:45

its own personality and it's and it's life.

2:48

It's fascinating. Even when you watch stop motion

2:50

today, there's something weird about it

2:52

because even though you

2:54

can make life out of drawings

2:57

or rigged characters on a screen, there's

2:59

something I've knowing that that actual figure

3:01

exists that is very attractive.

3:06

His jolly little eyes on me. It

3:09

take me me,

3:13

I like buying use like a christ mystery

3:19

and what

3:21

about you, Shamus. You know, it's a whole

3:24

process and and we enjoy

3:26

the process. And that's the funny thing about getting

3:29

involved with stop motion animation. It's one of

3:31

those things that you're kind of just really drawn to do,

3:33

I think from the time you're a kid. So

3:36

yeah, it does take this certain level of patients.

3:38

But at the same time, when I'm animating, I don't

3:41

feel like it's this tedious process.

3:43

On each of our stages, we only shoot about

3:46

five or six seconds a day,

3:49

But when when when you're doing that

3:51

process, though, I'm just kind of like zenning out

3:53

and I really enjoy the process of it, So I don't

3:55

feel like it's this tedious thing frame by frame,

3:57

because I'm always just thinking about the overall acting

4:00

of the shot, because when you're animating, you're you're

4:03

kind of sharing that performance with the voice actor,

4:05

so you're kind of like playing off what they're accenting.

4:08

And obviously all the voice actors on the show are

4:10

so great and give you so much to work with.

4:13

No hold your holly. We're singing

4:15

the best Christmas song ever, and that's silver Bells,

4:18

raw Fells Putty. Hey, I

4:20

want to sing Randolf the Red Nose

4:22

Seahorse, people

4:26

fell cash and not about the holidays.

4:29

Jamis you brought up that it's not tedious

4:31

to you guys, And I feel like whenever

4:34

somebody like sixty Minutes or you

4:37

know, NBC Nightly News or whatever, comes over

4:39

to your studio and does those little interviews with

4:41

you guys, the reporters always like so

4:44

stunned that it's not it's

4:46

not tedious. First of all, they're stunned by the process

4:48

and to hear that it takes a whole day

4:51

to make five seconds. I think that most

4:53

normal people go, well, why are you doing

4:55

this job? I would quit, like like they

4:58

just can't understand it. Even that we

5:00

do this this archaic form of

5:02

animation. Uh, we aren't

5:04

really opposed to technology. You know, you're

5:07

always trying to find a tool that helps you

5:10

create the performance or tell the story that

5:12

you want. Um. So we do

5:14

use a lot of computers to

5:16

both like model things and

5:19

also to give us video

5:21

reference as we're shooting. Because when you look at two D animators,

5:23

you know how they what they call flip and rolling

5:26

the drawings. When you see them flipping

5:28

and rolling, you could never do that with

5:30

stop motion in the olden days.

5:32

But then as soon as video taps

5:34

and things like that started coming out, then you could kind

5:37

of start flipping and

5:39

rolling your single frames, which was a

5:41

real game changer for stop motion.

5:43

So yeah, like around the you know, late

5:46

nineties is when that all started being available.

5:49

And one of the cool things though, that because

5:51

we were able to jump into the digital age

5:53

with capturing everything digitally

5:55

and stuff, we are still able to implement

5:58

our our desire of one to

6:00

shoot everything in front of camera as opposed

6:03

to creating it later on in

6:05

after effects or whatever. You know. We always

6:07

still try to go for like,

6:10

well, here's this ghost, are we going

6:12

to just create it in a in

6:14

a program or are we going to just build

6:16

it and shoot it in front of the

6:18

camera, in front of everything else. And so

6:20

that that ended up making

6:22

things a lot easier for us because you saw instant

6:25

feedback. So now

6:27

it allows us to make even more things to

6:29

put in front of camera and shoot it all

6:31

at the same time, as opposed to shooting

6:34

in different layers. Us to

6:37

following night and everyone

6:39

is getting their bloomers there off that

6:42

holiday is no word wait

6:46

a monen of you. That

6:49

kid isn't screaming with bear. You

6:55

guys have a very lovely of

6:57

relationship with SpongeBob from the Goofy

7:00

Goober Rock sequence, the

7:02

snowmallisk, the entire episode. It's a

7:04

SpongeBob Christmas. You guys

7:07

did the ten near anniversary

7:09

recreation of the

7:11

opening sequence. You did Legends of Bukini

7:13

Bottom, the Halloween special that we all love

7:16

so much. So how did this

7:18

relationship with SpongeBob start?

7:20

I know, I was trying to remember how that all

7:22

played out, because I feel like it's been you

7:25

know, man, over ten twelve,

7:27

you know it's been it's been close to twenty

7:30

years. Shay, Yeah,

7:33

Yeah. Mark Osborne, who had directed

7:35

Kung Fu Panda. He was working on the feature

7:37

shooting the live action stuff, right, didn't

7:40

Mark shoot the palm tree

7:42

and the water and stuff for the first

7:45

for the opening? Yeah, for the opening?

7:47

Yeah, that classic little

7:50

live action bit of the

7:52

island and then we go underwater. Yeah yeah,

7:54

yeah, they shot that in Steve spool really

7:57

yeah, because he and Steve were old friends.

8:03

I can't hear you

8:09

who does? Yeah,

8:12

Marc was telling a sad story and it's

8:14

funny. Even even the guy

8:16

that built the island, his

8:18

name is Joe Schmidt. He's a he's a

8:21

dear friend of ours and he still works on

8:23

the SpongeBob stuff with us. We have this,

8:25

you know, small group of talented

8:28

people would really like to work with, but it's this very

8:30

close knit small group. They've

8:33

pretty much been with us through all of this

8:35

stuff. The core group is really only about ten

8:37

to twelve people who specialize

8:39

in either fabricating the puppets

8:41

or lighting the miniature sets, or building the

8:43

miniature sets or animating. Is it a family

8:46

affair? Like do you find that you find

8:48

a lot of people that are like, yeah, my dad, my

8:50

grandfa No I wish,

8:53

I wish, but no, no, not real because

8:55

usually probably if someone if

8:57

your grandpa was a stop motion animator or whatever,

9:00

they probably the kids probably see

9:02

how crazy it is of a way to try to

9:04

live. I think I'll become

9:06

an accountant and have a stable job. So

9:10

so you guys were describing like Mark Osborne

9:13

is working on the first SpongeBob movie,

9:15

and that's where and

9:17

is shooting the live action elements that the various

9:20

like David Hastle hop stuff, all that weird

9:22

fun stuff and that first SpongeBob movie. And

9:25

that's where screen Novelties

9:27

comes in. With the Goofy Goober animation

9:29

segment. We built the Clay Goofy

9:31

Gooper SpongeBob and the thing got

9:33

direction from Mark and Steve and we had

9:35

this crutty little like just

9:38

one room shooting in space where we're renting

9:40

up by the Empire Center in Burbank. And

9:43

when we were ready to shoot next to the train

9:45

tracks, which is great when you're trying to shoot

9:47

stop motion and the whole places rattling.

9:50

Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

9:52

But then you know we're ready to shoot and stuff,

9:54

and and Mark's like, hey, we're gonna come over and check

9:56

it out. And we're like oh cool, And we thought

9:58

it was just gonna be a Mark and Steve. It was

10:01

like the entire crew. Everybody showed up.

10:03

Everyone just showed up and we're like, oh my gosh,

10:05

you know, and they're all kind of looking at this clay

10:08

globe. That's all

10:10

it really was. And we had like a little replacement

10:12

mouths and stuff like that. You know that we were

10:14

able to star background sculpt in there

10:17

and everything and and a star back backdrop.

10:19

Yeah. Like that just shows you how passionate the

10:22

SpongeBob crew is, because that's what I remember

10:24

is when they came over, they were just so nice

10:26

and I felt like we immediately clicked

10:28

with them. And after they left, I was like, these

10:30

are the nicest people. Yeah,

10:33

And I mean I think that that shows

10:35

in the show, you know. I mean that's why the show

10:38

is so great, is that all these really

10:41

passionate, dedicated people

10:44

love making this thing. Wow,

10:49

polite of me, I forgot

10:51

to introduce you to my that's

10:57

the most realistic, fake moster I ever

10:59

saw.

11:02

Who are you calling? Fank

11:09

with us with stop motion? But this is what we love

11:11

to do, So we put a you know, love

11:13

in every frame. So we appreciate it because sometimes

11:15

you work with people or clients

11:17

or whatever and they just want it done.

11:19

I just remember Steve really being fascinated

11:22

and asking questions about the

11:24

process and stuff, and it was just

11:26

so nice to have them be that interested

11:29

in what you were doing for this little tiny

11:31

section of the movie. I think even

11:33

Tom Kenney showed up. Wow, that doesn't

11:35

surprise me. Tom is also just such an enthusiast

11:38

of animation in general, and it's so

11:40

cool that you guys are describing how the

11:43

whole crew showed up. Do they also have

11:45

a sort of passion for stop motion animation

11:47

because it seems like they've used

11:50

you guys as much as they possibly

11:52

could throughout the years. That's what initially

11:56

got me drawn to the show is that

11:58

it wasn't just a standard

12:01

cartoon. From having the opening

12:03

shot be that pool with a little

12:05

miniature tree, like if, the

12:07

whole show felt very multi media

12:09

from the beginning, you know, and it felt

12:12

like they were trying to fit in as many like weird

12:14

cutout animation type

12:16

shots, like almost like a Terry Gilliam esque

12:19

kind of thing being and then from

12:21

stop motion or just a little model miniature

12:24

shot obviously the two ds the

12:26

core feel of the show, but they always

12:29

knew to just throw in a few little cool

12:31

things like that to to work on your imagination

12:33

in the background there, and that's what drew

12:36

us to the show right away.

12:38

Others are talking never rent

12:41

erupt, don't put people down

12:43

or leave the toilet seat up. It's

12:45

the time for family and Holly

12:48

and Turkey. Business season,

12:50

Jupy Jerky Gallant

12:54

Santa brought nearly every gift

12:56

on your list wide wine

12:58

about the one Eddie miss don't

13:01

be It's

13:05

Christmas, Christmas,

13:12

It's Christmas. Out

13:22

of all of the SpongeBob stuff that you've

13:24

worked on, do you guys have any favorite

13:26

moments, anything that you're

13:28

particularly proud of. The

13:30

SpongeBob Halloween that we did, that's

13:33

my favorite too. The scare song

13:35

was so much fun. It was a blast.

13:37

It was the last project we had worked on with

13:40

Steve. You know, he personally oversaw everything,

13:43

and Mark and Vince are the showrunners

13:45

on it and stuff, and they're just like, do

13:47

whatever you want, you know, and they

13:49

just like I remember sitting in the antimatic

13:52

edit with with Mark and Vince and Steve

13:54

and we're just like is it COVID do this, or

13:57

like, yeah, is it Covie do this? Yeah, it's

13:59

a cool with do this. You know when

14:01

they say how nice they are, they

14:03

really are. I mean it's it's amazing.

14:06

And what Steve had told me once,

14:08

you know, I said, Steve, whatever you want to change,

14:10

like, we don't want to mess with SpongeBob

14:13

too much, Like I want to make sure it all still fits

14:15

in the world that you created. And he said,

14:17

I've done everything I want to do with SpongeBob.

14:20

I want you guys to do what you do with SpongeBob.

14:23

What a great guy, this guy,

14:25

you know, Steve Hillenberg, the nicest guy

14:27

in the world. He was just so gracious

14:30

and giving with letting everybody

14:32

else be creative as well. Yeah, just open

14:34

to you know, everything, saw us to feel

14:36

true to the SpongeBob world.

14:39

But within that he did give

14:42

you a lot of leeway. But the

14:44

funny thing is it's almost too long of a leash

14:46

to give you because what we found right away

14:48

was that stop motions. Already this

14:51

new interpretation SpongeBob

14:54

himself of the character, you don't want to

14:56

do anything that betrays how everybody

14:58

already feels about how

15:01

he is, how what what he would do in

15:03

certain situations, and it's and it was kind

15:05

of intimidating to be kind of like scooted

15:08

out into the bikini bottom world.

15:10

It was exhilarating and I like sort

15:13

of scary and feeling like a big responsibility

15:15

at the same time, because they're these beloved

15:18

characters and we love them and you know, when

15:20

you're reinterpreting them in this new way.

15:22

As much as the show already has this um

15:25

mixed media vibe to it, we were

15:27

really worried that people would

15:29

be like, well, this isn't the SpongeBob. We know,

15:31

you know, he's weird, but the thing is the show

15:33

is weird, so uh,

15:36

you know. We had a really good time,

15:38

and it was also really hard to just interpret

15:41

this adorable two D character into

15:43

a dimensional model that

15:46

doesn't feel like weird and gross.

15:48

He had to exude the

15:50

SpongeBob energy and that was

15:53

a huge challenge. The first couple

15:55

of times we were going through trying

15:57

to interpret the character, we realized how

15:59

much we had to push and pull things and

16:02

how every aspect of the fabrication

16:05

plays into it, from finding the exact

16:07

right foam that when you light, it

16:09

kind of has this happy glow to it. You'll

16:12

actually see an evolution of

16:14

our design of SpongeBob through

16:16

over the years because the opening

16:19

title, you know that SpongeBob

16:22

has a lot more like he's really

16:24

dense looking. And

16:44

then we switched over to a

16:46

couch phone. The open cell qualities

16:49

of it are able to catch light and

16:52

so that gives out a little bit of a luminous

16:54

and quality. But then we went from there, we

16:56

refined it further into the Halloween

16:59

one, and then we devolved for Patrick Starr.

17:01

Yes, yes, it's the whole version

17:03

of it. It's like, you know, the black and white. It's

17:06

so cool. Yeah,

17:09

why I do laughing? Uh? Hatrick?

17:12

What's wrong with you? Spongebobryses?

17:17

Patrick? Is this really happening? And

17:20

this isn't funny? Was wrong? SpongeBob?

17:23

Sometimes skirryqual

17:26

scary?

17:35

Which character was do you think the most

17:37

difficult to pin and nail down? Was it SpongeBob

17:40

himself or was was there anybody else was giving

17:42

you some difficulty? Well, they each have

17:44

their challenges, you know, squid

17:47

Word having all of his thin little legs

17:49

and stuff, and Mr Crabs

17:52

being this giant monolithic

17:55

shape, you know. Um, yeah, he

17:57

was hard and so was Patrick because

17:59

in the cartoon, Patrick's mouth goes

18:02

right into his body. You know, the physical limitations

18:05

of trying to build that and animate it.

18:07

We're there, and so we kind of just took advantage

18:10

of our limitations and kind of like for

18:12

the Christmas one, we decided to, you

18:15

know, give him a little scarf that you

18:17

know, it was believable that his mouth would

18:20

stay in the head area. What's

18:22

that? It's a trap,

18:26

a trap for Senda dated

18:29

with Christmas treats. Will

18:31

trap Santal in my box

18:34

blocked up like fort knocks

18:36

and make himself the clocks well

18:40

Christmas, Oh

18:42

he cookie.

18:49

I think it was plankton, Oh

18:51

wow, because so

18:53

many different scales and close

18:56

up plankton, miniature scale plankton.

18:58

He was a little bit harder because as he was so tiny,

19:01

you know, in the first few that

19:03

because we're literally going like little

19:05

bean size puppets, and that was kind

19:08

of like excruciating. We

19:11

had we called it the jelly bean plankton

19:13

because he was about the size of a jelly bean. But

19:16

then when he was close up, we had a larger one. Guys,

19:19

what's so funny is that Frankie

19:21

and I just spent the last few weeks talking

19:23

to some of the actors who portrayed

19:26

these characters on the Broadway Show,

19:29

and and we were asking them similar

19:31

questions and they also, I think Frankie

19:33

correct me if I'm wrong, kind of saying, like, the

19:36

most difficult one to conceptualize

19:38

was Plankton because of the size differentia,

19:40

which is so so funny that both you

19:42

guys and the Broadway Show are

19:44

having to solve similar problems in different

19:46

ways, which is so great. No

19:50

doting stuff right up,

19:53

Mr Crabs and it's fang of Johnny,

19:55

mindless fools, stopped

19:57

bikini bottom mine I punish

20:00

just victims and then

20:02

drag down the lifeless bodies to the

20:04

kitchen. You

20:12

have fun. It's

20:15

funny because when we were starting

20:18

out doing stop motion, we

20:21

remember a specifically saying

20:24

the thing you don't see a lot of in stop motion

20:26

is this cartoony two

20:28

D sensibility to the timing because stop

20:30

motion is so technical and how

20:33

you have to tie characters down and all that stuff. We're

20:35

like that, maybe that's what we want

20:37

to explore, is doing this cartoonish

20:39

stuff because a lot of our animation heroes

20:41

are to come from the two D world, and

20:43

it was just really nice to meet the sponge about guys

20:46

because it's like the most classic

20:48

cartoonish show because

20:50

it still has all these squashy, stretchy and

20:53

and and having characters

20:55

transform and do strange things

20:57

like SpongeBob can do all these crazy things.

21:00

So it was great to

21:02

say, like, wow, let's put all this to the test

21:04

and see how cartoony we can go. And

21:08

the funny thing is you're still working with a TV

21:10

schedule, TV budget. You know, it's

21:12

like you've got time to do something, but you

21:14

don't really have that much time or money

21:16

to do much. It's just the nature of it. It took

21:18

us five months to shoot the Christmas

21:20

special, and I think

21:22

another five months to shoot the Halloween

21:25

special. There's a couple of months of fabrication

21:28

before that. Like the whole process usually

21:30

takes about ten nine or ten months

21:33

from first thinking

21:35

to post. They

21:38

they really inspire you, and so you want

21:40

to do a good job for them.

21:42

They're trusting you, so you don't want to let them down.

21:44

So we put every weel

21:46

everything we can. Plus we're excited

21:48

to try a bunch of stuff every time. We always

21:50

give ourselves some new thing we want to try. Even

21:53

when we were doing the Goofy Goober Globe,

21:55

Steve at that time even mentioned

21:57

he's like, someday we're going to do it. The whole Christmas

22:00

special. Yeah,

22:01

it was, wasn't it? What like it

22:04

was years until that happened. It

22:06

was, Yeah, we shot Coffee Guber's

22:09

two thousand three four

22:11

and then we got the special, so

22:16

so he was thinking about it even then. And

22:18

then after we finished the Christmas Special,

22:21

I think I remember he and Vincent sank

22:23

after this, we're gonna do a Halloween thing and

22:26

then you know, it's like five years, but

22:28

they eventually pulled it off.

22:30

Wow,

22:36

you hear that some of giants that Briou

22:38

spirit singing.

22:41

There's just one thing to say.

22:46

You have worked on so many cool different projects.

22:48

You've done stuff for cup Head Captain,

22:51

Underpant's Adventure time. McDonald's

22:54

is a client, So you've done all this

22:56

amazing work in your minds?

22:58

Why is SpongeBob special? What

23:00

does it mean to screen novelties

23:03

to have worked on SpongeBob stuff?

23:05

For me, whenever I think about SpongeBob,

23:07

I just think about the crew that we work with,

23:09

and I do love watching the shows, even though

23:11

I don't watch them that much after we make them, because

23:13

it's kind of weird. We've gotten so

23:16

much work from them and we appreciate

23:18

every single frame we do for them because

23:21

we know that they do it because

23:23

they have faith in what we do.

23:26

They trust us to come up with something new, and

23:29

we do it because I

23:31

mean a lot of other people

23:33

might say like, oh, what you know, you there's

23:35

too much, Like I want to move on to somebody else, Like we

23:38

enthusiastically do any SpongeBob

23:40

project that they offer our way because,

23:43

um, we know how cool they are, how creative

23:45

they are. The characters allow

23:47

you to be uninhibited with your

23:50

arrange, emotion and the way you want

23:52

to animate them. Also, just like how

23:54

you know, Steve trusted us in the beginning and

23:57

we didn't have a lot of experience and

23:59

that really goes as far. Yeah, just

24:01

every collaboration that we have

24:03

with the whole SpongeBob troop just feels like this

24:06

natural fit. You know, Um, we're

24:08

all coming from the same planet humor

24:10

wise and design wise, and we're

24:12

not there day to day as part of the crew, so

24:15

we feel kind of like we're this sort

24:17

of little honorary members off to the side

24:19

that we get to sometimes come in and play with everybody

24:22

where the we're cousins that show up every once

24:24

in a while. Every time we get to do that, it's just

24:26

such a blast. That

24:33

was such a fantastic interview with those two

24:35

unbelievably talented human beings.

24:37

I mean, we're learning so many cool, fun facts

24:40

that have never been discovered before on this podcast.

24:42

I love that once again we're learning

24:44

that Stephen Hillenberg is just the nicest

24:47

guy in the world and for him,

24:49

for him to have created it would ended up being

24:51

the most successful cartoon show

24:53

of all time. It just makes me very happy, and I

24:55

love the creative energy behind

24:58

everything that Screen Novelties is doing huge.

25:00

Thanks again to Shamus Walsh and

25:03

Mark Cabaetto for spending some time with us,

25:05

sharing their stories and just like

25:07

getting me even more excited about stop motion

25:09

animation, which is so so cool. So

25:12

thanks again, guys, and don't forget

25:14

to listen in every Thursday for new

25:16

episodes of SpongeBob binge Pants

25:18

wherever you get your podcast and if

25:20

you like where we're up to over here, spread the

25:22

word, write a review, and keep

25:25

watching cartoons. Thanks, and we'll see

25:27

you next week.