It's a SpongeBob Christmas!
"It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" | |
---|---|
Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas)" by Tom Kenny and Andy Paley | |
Production code | 268-841/268-842[1] |
Original air dates | November 23, 2012CBS) December 6, 2012Nickelodeon) ( | (
Guest appearance | |
"It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" is the 23rd episode of the
The episode was produced in
Upon premiere, "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" attracted nearly five million viewers and met positive critical reception. It received four nominations at the 40th Annie Awards including Best Animated Television Production for Children (with Dan Driscoll winning the Character Animation in an Animated Television or other Broadcast Venue Production category). It was also nominated for Best Sound Editing in Television at the 60th Golden Reel Awards.
Plot summary
In the opening wraparound of the special,
The next day, SpongeBob begins to notice that everyone is acting like jerks. SpongeBob and Sandy Cheeks discover the antidote for jerktonium, and it happens to be a song. SpongeBob sings the song and brings back the residents' Christmas spirit. When Santa Claus arrives, however, he states that everyone in town is on his naughty list except for Plankton, whom he gives the secret formula. The SpongeBob robot arrives to eliminate Santa, but SpongeBob destroys the robot with the fruitcake dispenser. Santa thanks SpongeBob and gives Plankton coal upon learning that he was behind the chaos.
As Patchy is about to give up searching for Santa, he suddenly finds what he believes to be Santa's workshop. He then sees Santa with gifts in a cave and tells him his Christmas wish is to meet SpongeBob. Patchy realizes that he was hallucinating and in reality encountered a polar bear, which starts chasing him. After Santa puts Patchy on the naughty list for stealing the mail truck, he and Potty wish the audience a Merry Christmas.
Voice cast
"Actor/Actress" | Role |
---|---|
Tom Kenny | SpongeBob SquarePants Patchy the Pirate ToyBob Postman SpongeBob's Tastebuds Additional voices |
Bill Fagerbakke | Patrick Star Frankie Additional voices |
Rodger Bumpass | Squidward Tentacles Johnny Additional voices |
Clancy Brown | Mr. Krabs fake Santa |
Carolyn Lawrence | Sandy Cheeks Additional voices |
Mr. Lawrence | Plankton Additional voices |
Jill Talley | Karen Additional voices |
Lori Alan | Pearl Krabs |
Paul Tibbitt | Potty the Parrot |
John Goodman | Santa Claus |
Production
Development, writing, and voice casting
Luke Brookshier, Marc Ceccarelli, Derek Iversen, and Mr. Lawrence served as the episode's writers, with Brookshier and Ceccarelli serving as storyboard directors. "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" was based on the 2009 Christmas song "Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas)" written by SpongeBob's voice actor Tom Kenny and his writing partner Andy Paley. They wrote it as "...just sort of a little sample calling card of what we were thinking about."[2] The story of the song was conceived with the help of one of the episode's writers Mr. Lawrence.[2] Kenny explained, "...Eventually somebody at Nickelodeon found it [the song] on their desk and decided to make it into a holiday special."[3] The network let Kenny and Paley write three more songs for the upcoming special episode (Nickelodeon eventually decided to release a soundtrack album, which became It's a SpongeBob Christmas! Album, containing the songs to coincide with the episode).[3]
"It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" was the first full-length episode of the series to be produced in
All the main SpongeBob SquarePants cast members lent their voices to the episode. Series executive producer Paul Tibbitt also had a minor speaking role as the voice of Potty the Parrot. In addition to the regular cast, American actor John Goodman guest starred in the episode as the voice of Santa Claus.[7]
Animation and filming
The animators cited the classic television specials
Production on the episode officially began in October 2011 at Los Angeles, California, after several months of research and development.[6] The animators worked closely with executive producer Paul Tibbitt, creator Stephen Hillenburg, and creative director Vincent Waller to ensure the cartoon characters were properly translated into three-dimensional puppets.[6][9] Hillenburg and Tibbitt provided hands-on feedback on the production on a weekly basis. "They'd check out the weeklies and go back and forth with us on the various gags [...] It was really a pleasurable experience when they came to visit, because we come from the same planet. It all felt very easy and natural," Walsh said.[6]
About 30 people—whom Walsh described "...seemed to be thrilled to work on the show"—worked on the making of the episode over at Screen Novelties. Walsh described the initial stage of production as "a very busy period for all of us ... We came in at about 8:30 in the morning and didn't leave until midnight some days. But it all zipped by pretty quickly." He said that they "felt pretty lucky because usually executives involved with productions look at the stop-motion process as annoying, but on this special, they were very jazzed and gung-go about it."[6] To keep the production crew in the Christmas spirit, six months worth of Christmas music was played, which included 83 versions of The Nutcracker suite.[9] According to Finnegan, it took about five months to shoot.[8]
Set construction
Caballero and Walsh had conflicts on making sure the stop motion version of Bikini Bottom will resemble the 2D world of the series.[6] Caballero said that "We didn't want to make exact sculptural copies of the cartoon drawings and layouts, just because it might've ended up feeling too 'perfect' or something. So we chose to re-appropriate real world objects as much as possible." Art director Kelly Mazurowski focused on "digging through salvage yards", picking the right materials to be used in the set. Caballero described this process as "'puppetizing' the world of Bikini Bottom."[8]
Six sets were constructed on which 60 pounds of baking soda were used as snow (the crew tried to use real snow but it melted),[9] 42 pounds of glitter were used to cover the background, and 20 boxes of breakfast cereal were used to cover the coral rocks.[6] Over 38 different types of foam were used to make the set pieces and the characters' bodies and heads. To render SpongeBob's pineapple house, palm fronds from a tree in a school yard were used. Other props and materials used were an actual starfish, three Christmas trees (for the Patchy the Pirate's Winter Wonderland scenes), six boxes of puff cereal (to create the fruitcake inside SpongeBob's mouth), 21 pounds of googly eyes (for rivets, texture pieces, knobs, etc.), 22 pounds of woodchips (to create Sandy's treedome floor), and 24 bunches of craft flowers (to create the parade float).[6][9]
Character design
"We had to make sure SpongeBob felt like SpongeBob[...] It actually took us a few months of going back and forth to make sure it didn't feel too plastic-y and ultrarealistic. We ended up using a type of cushion foam that was pretty malleable and gave off a bit of a translucent yellow glow off him. It had feel cuddly and happy-go-lucky as well as having that extra crazy element. It's not easy to translate a 2D character into a puppet: It can get ugly if you're not careful."
—Director Mark Caballero, on transforming the SpongeBob character into stop motion.[6]
According to Caballero, SpongeBob was the most challenging character to translate to stop motion. It was so "...just because of the sheer number of parts that needed to be made. We wanted to retain as much of that squashy-stretchy goofiness as possible, so he had dozens of replacement parts, like arms, noses, even various sizes of cheeks and freckles. Of course, as the main character, you really want to make sure he will charm the audience, which brings a special kind of pressure."[8] Walsh said, "The most important thing is to capture the spirit of the character, not necessarily a literal copy of the 2D. Puppets have their own kind of energy and you have to be careful about what to include and what to leave out." On the other hand, Patchy the Pirate became the easiest character to make "because he has the most humanoid proportions."[8]
Release
Broadcast
A sneak-peek
Home media and other releases
"It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" was released on a DVD compilation of the same name on October 30, 2012, in Canada and on November 6, 2012, in the United States.
Reception
Ratings
In its original airing on CBS on November 23, the episode was viewed by an estimated 3.626 million households and received a 0.9
Critical reception
"I don't know if 'SpongeBob SquarePants: It's a SpongeBob Christmas!' will become the TV classic watched year after year that the production teams hopes it will be... but it's good enough for right now. Plenty of funny gags and beautiful stop-motion animation add up to a Christmas winner here. I'm highly recommending 'SpongeBob SquarePants: It's a SpongeBob Christmas!.'"
The special episode received positive reviews from media critics. In his review for the
In her review for the
Accolades
Year | Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result | Ref(s). |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2013 | Annecy International Animated Film Festival
|
Special Award for a TV Series | Nominated | [36] | |
2013 | Annie Awards
|
Best Animated Television Production for Children | Nominated | [37][38] | |
2013 | Directing in an Animated Television or other Broadcast Venue Production | Mark Caballero Seamus Walsh |
Nominated | [37][38] | |
2013 | Character Animation in an Animated Television or other Broadcast Venue Production | Dan Driscoll | Won | [37][38] | |
2013 | Savelen Forrest | Nominated | [37][38] | ||
2013 | Golden Reel Awards | Best Sound Editing – Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR Animation in Television | Mishelle Fordham, Vincent Guisetti, Jeffrey Hutchins, James Ian Lifton, Paulette Victor Lifton, D.J. Lynch, Wes Otis, Monique Reymond, Ed Steidele, Aran Tanchum | Nominated | [39][40] |
Merchandise
Nickelodeon and Random House released a book based on the episode called It's a SpongeBob Christmas!.[41] The book is illustrated by Heather Martinez and was released on September 10, 2013.[42]
References
- ^ SpongeBob SquarePants Episode Guide -Nicktoons Prods[dead link]
- ^ a b Parker, Melissa (January 9, 2013). "Tom Kenny and SpongeBob SquarePants Interview: 'Don't Be a Jerk (It's Christmas)'". Smashing Interviews.
- ^ a b Macquirre, Jim (December 6, 2012). "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!". Wired. Archived from the original on February 7, 2013. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
- ^ a b c Beck, Jerry (November 6, 2012). "It's A Spongebob Stop-Mo Christmas". Cartoon Brew. Archived from the original on November 13, 2012. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
- ^ Sarto, Dan (December 5, 2012). "A Stop-Motion SpongeBob Special Means Christmas Comes Early This Year". Animation World Network. Archived from the original on November 2, 2014. Retrieved November 1, 2014.
- ^ Animation. Archivedfrom the original on December 12, 2012. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
- The Huffington Post. June 14, 2012. Archivedfrom the original on July 30, 2012. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Ferrante, A.C. (December 6, 2012). "Exclusive Interview with the 'It's a SpongeBob Christmas' stop motion special creative team". Assignment X. Archived from the original on December 2, 2013. Retrieved May 9, 2013.
- ^ a b c d e Frauenfelder, Mark (December 4, 2012). "The making of 'It's a SpongeBob Christmas' stop-motion episode". Boing Boing. Archived from the original on January 29, 2013. Retrieved October 31, 2014.
- ^ Liu, Ed (June 15, 2012). ""It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" Trailer Released". Toonzone. Archived from the original on February 22, 2013. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
- ^ Beck, Jerry (June 18, 2012). "TRAILER: Spongebob Stop-Mo Xmas Special". Cartoon Brew. Archived from the original on February 11, 2013. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
- ^ "CBS to Air 'SpongeBob' Christmas Special". Hispanic Business. October 19, 2012. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
- ^ Bibel, Sarah (October 18, 2012). "CBS Announces New Holiday Special 'It's a SpongeBob Christmas'". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012. Retrieved October 19, 2012.
- ^ Sacco, Dominic (November 13, 2012). "It's A SpongeBob Christmas special to air on TV". Licensing.biz. Archived from the original on November 17, 2012.
- ^ a b Kondolojy, Amanda (December 5, 2012). "Nickelodeon's 'It's a SpongeBob Christmas!' Premieres Dec. 6". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on December 9, 2012. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ "New on DVD and Blu-ray, Nov. 6". San Francisco Chronicle. November 5, 2012. Archived from the original on November 8, 2012. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
- ^ a b "Nickelodeon Debuts First Full-Length Stop-Motion Special, It's A SpongeBob Christmas!, Dec. 9, At 7:30 p.m. (ET/PT)". PR Newswire. October 31, 2012. Archived from the original on November 3, 2012. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
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- ^ "SpongeBob SquarePants – It's Not a Blu Christmas After All (Plus Final Complete Artwork)". TV Shows on DVD. September 12, 2012. Archived from the original on November 15, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ Lambert, David (July 22, 2013). "SpongeBob SquarePants – USA General Release for Blu/DVD Combo of 'It's A SpongeBob Christmas!'". TV Shows on DVD. Archived from the original on July 26, 2013. Retrieved July 23, 2013.
- ^ Lambert, David (December 10, 2012). "SpongeBob SquarePants – The Complete Season 8 DVD Set is Announced for March". TVShowsOnDVD.com. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 8, 2013.
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- ^ Bibel, Sara (December 11, 2012). "Nickelodeon's 'It's a SpongeBob Christmas!' Special Draws Nearly 5 Million Viewers". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on November 21, 2013. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
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- ^ Wolfe, Jennifer (December 11, 2012). "It's a SpongeBob Christmas! Ranks Top Ratings". Animation World Network. Archived from the original on January 31, 2013. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
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- ^ "Audiencia del 20/12/2012". laguiatv.abc.es. December 20, 2012. Archived from the original on October 6, 2015. Retrieved March 3, 2014.
- ^ a b Mavis, Paul (November 18, 2012). "SpongeBob SquarePants: It's A SpongeBob Christmas!". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on February 1, 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
- ^ "Review: 'It's a SpongeBob Christmas!' adds an extra dimension". Los Angeles Times. November 22, 2012. Archived from the original on November 23, 2012. Retrieved November 24, 2012.
- Daily News. Archivedfrom the original on October 6, 2015. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
- ^ Handlen, Zack (November 23, 2012). "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on January 30, 2013. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
- ^ Hunt, Judge Dawn (December 2, 2012). "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!". DVD Verdict. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
- About.com. Archived from the originalon March 28, 2013. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
- Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Archived from the originalon April 1, 2013. Retrieved December 31, 2013.
- ^ a b c d Webb, Charles (February 4, 2013). "'Wreck-It Ralph' Smashes Competition In 2013 Annie Awards". MTV. Archived from the original on September 28, 2013. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
- ^ a b c d "Annie Award Nominations – A Real Race For Once". TheFilmExperience.net. December 4, 2012. Archived from the original on March 23, 2013. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
- ^ "Best Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue, and ADR Animation in Television" (PDF). Motion Picture Sound Editors. Retrieved April 15, 2013.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Giardina, Carolyn (January 17, 2013). "Sound Editors Announce Golden Reel Nominees". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on April 4, 2013. Retrieved April 15, 2013.
- ^ "It's a Spongebob Christmas! by Random House". FictionDB.com. Archived from the original on September 27, 2013. Retrieved July 23, 2013.
- ISBN 978-0385378567.
External links
- "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!" at IMDb