SpongeBob SquarePants the popular character of the cartoons that appear in Nickleodeon was created by Stephen Hillenburg in 1984. The idea of this submarine character and his friends came to Hillenburg while working as a marine biologist in California. Later he would leave this job to pursue a career as an animator.
So far more than 300 chapters of SpongeBob have been created plus a succesful feature film: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.