21
couraged us to experiment, to follow our ideas wherever they
would take us. Jules set a wonderful example for us to take
chances and find our own voices, which is the most valuable
thing for a filmmaker to have.
17
Hillenburg studied with Engel and later talked about the influ-
ence the artist and educator had on his career when he was inter-
viewed for a nonfiction feature film about Engel titled
Visualizing Art
History: Experimental Animation and Its Mentor, Jules Engel
, which is
still in production. Hillenburg said:
Not only was Jules Engel a seminal figure in the history of ani-
mation, he also had a profound influence on countless genera-
tions of animators. He truly was the most influential artistic
person inmy life. I consider himmy “Art Dad.”
The work he pro-
duced both professionally and personally was groundbreaking
. . . .
Jules always promoted the notion that animation could be a
means of personal expression. Jules Engel’s films are true ex-
amples of the unlimited possibility that the art form of anima-
tion offers.
18
Hillenburg valued Engel’s mentorship so much that he dedicated
2004’s
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
to Engel, after his mentor
died during the film’s production.
Independent Animated Films
While a graduate student at CalArts, Hillenburg made several in-
dependent animated films. In 1991 he created
The Green Beret
. The
film tells the story of a Girl Scout whose hands are so big and strong
that she knocks down and destroys houses when she knocks on the
door to sell her cookies. He also created a film titled
Animation Diary
,
which consisted of 365 drawings, each drawn on the individual days
that constituted the year 1991.
In 1992 Hillenburg made
Wormholes
, a six-minute animated film
about the theory of relativity, for his graduate thesis production. He
