SOAKING IN SUCCESS HOW A MILD-MANNERED SURFER AND MARINE BIOLOGIST TURNED HIS INNOCENT ANIMATED CHARACTER INTO A $1.5 BILLION ENTERPRISE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

``SpongeBob SquarePants'' creator Steve Hillenburg knows what some of you are thinking because he has thought it, too - on many, many occasions. There was the time he and some buddies went surfing down in Baja California and he saw a souvenir stand selling cheap ceramic SpongeBob figurines in Tijuana. There are the watches and the sprinkler attachments, the dog sweater, the Barbie doll (!), the talking cookie jar and even the SpongeBob bait bucket.

``It is a little much,'' the soft-spoken Hillenburg says. ``I wanted to create something new and original. I figured we'd have a cult following for this weird little show. It still is a weird little show. It just got big. It's a big little weird show.''

And now it's a big little weird movie as well. ``The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie'' opened in theaters on Friday and took in more than $30 million, making for Paramount Pictures' biggest opening weekend in 3 1/2 years. The film is well on its way to becoming the highest-grossing Nickelodeon feature, raising the yellow sponge's profile to even greater heights.

But the man behind the sponge would prefer to live in anonymity. Hillenburg, 43, resides in Pasadena with his wife and young son. He rarely grants interviews and, though colleagues call him a perfectionist workaholic, Hillenburg would just as soon be surfing than spending another day at his Burbank studio.

``He's this sweet, soulful surfer/artist/animator/marine biologist,'' says Tom Kenny, the voice behind SpongeBob. ``He's like Buckaroo Banzai. And everyone he works with are sweet, benign maniacs.''

Adds Julie Pistor, senior vice president of Nickelodeon Movies: ``He never intended for the show to be successful on this level. I think that has really overwhelmed him. He's very shy. He doesn't want people to know about his life or family. He's just a really funny, down-to-earth guy with a dry sense of humor who puts his family first and keeps us on our toes in keeping our corporate integrity.''

Case in point: Target department stores, a promotional partner, wanted to use the Huey Lewis song ``Hip to Be Square'' to promote a line of SpongeBob movie merchandise. Hillenburg nixed the idea.

``No offense to Huey Lewis,'' Hillenburg says. ``But the idea of SpongeBob is that he isn't hip, so the song really goes against that. What's special and funny about the character is that he's pretty unaware and dorky. And, besides, it just seemed like we didn't need to align ourselves with a really known pop song.''

The new slogan - Dare to Be Square - was more in line with Hillenburg's life philosophy. He grew up in Anaheim, learned to surf and snorkel when he was a teenager and obtained a degree in natural resource planning - with an emphasis in marine biology - from Humboldt State. His goal: Teach kids about ocean life and maybe design some exhibits for aquariums.

After he graduated, Hillenburg worked at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point (then known as the Marine Institute), teaching and making visual aids. But after three years of doing this, Hillenburg realized he was more interested in making art than he was in teaching science. He returned to school, enrolling at Cal Arts, where he studied experimental animation, drew in sketch pads and made a few short films. After he graduated, Hillenburg worked on ``Rocko's Modern Life,'' an animated show on Nickelodeon.

``SpongeBob'' came, naturally enough, from Hillenburg's interest in undersea life and a desire to create a character for kids that celebrated innocence. Hillenburg envisioned SpongeBob as a square peg, awkward, goofy, eternally optimistic and strangely enthusiastic about the most mundane things, including flipping Krabby patties at his place of employment, the Krusty Krab restaurant.

The series premiered on Nickelodeon in 1999 and currently generates around $1.5 billion a year in licensing revenue. Outside of its target audience of preschool and grade-school kids, the show has developed a significant following among college students - 22 percent of the series' audience falls in the 18-49 age range, according to Nielsen numbers - who see SpongeBob's doofus sidekick, Patrick Starfish, as one of their own (provided you're a dim-witted frat boy) and love the title character's childlike cluelessness.

``We were talking to some kids in upstate New York,'' says Nickelodeon's Pistor, ``and asked them why they liked SpongeBob and this girl said, 'Because he's blissfully unaware.' And Steve said, 'That's exactly it.' For college students or any adult in a pressure-filled environment, you want to go back to your innocence sometimes. We'd all like to be blissfully unaware.''

The importance of preserving children's innocence has been a long- running theme of the television series and is a significant part of the film as well. One of the show's most endearing episodes, ``Grandma's Kisses,'' has SpongeBob determined to grow up when his peers make him feel self-conscious of his grandmother's love for him. But when he becomes an ``adult,'' SpongeBob misses the homemade chocolate chip cookies, the bedtime stories and the ``sweater with love in every stitch.''

``It's funny, but ultimately, I also think it's meaningful to have that point of view,'' Hillenburg says.

``There's this accelerated approach to raising kids now where we want to introduce them to as much as we possibly can and pack their days with as much as we possibly can and train them and have them be little experts on anything they can be experts on as soon as we possibly can,'' says Bill Fagerbakke, who voices Patrick Starfish on the show.

``And all that loses sight of the fact that the part of being a kid that leads you into being a creative kid is being bored out of your skull a lot of the time. You know, going on road trips where there's not a television in the car.''

``Yeah,'' adds Kenny, finishing the thought, ``how about just looking out the window?''

There are currently 60 episodes of ``SpongeBob'' (containing two stories each) running seemingly 24 hours a day on one of Nickelodeon's many cable networks. Twenty additional episodes have been ordered with Hillenburg on board as executive producer. Mostly, though, Hillenburg is done with SpongeBob. He's ready to move on to something more low-key.

Given his aversion to the spotlight, Hillenburg wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing the movie at the premiere. But he was craving the communal experience that the movie version of ``SpongeBob'' would provide.

``You can't sneak into people's houses while they're watching it on TV - though I've tried,'' he says. ``To be able to sneak into a theater in my neighborhood and just sit there quietly and listen to people laugh ... that's going to be fun.''

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) SpongeBob SquarePants, center, with his undersea pals, has won over both children and adults with his sweetness and naivete. ``The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie'' took in more than $30 million over the weekend.

(2 -- cover -- color) The man. The sponge. The pants.

How an underwater world turned into a gold mine.