Watch Stephen Hillenburg's fantastic pre-SpongeBob student animation from 1992

In 1992, seven years before the premier of SpongeBob SquarePants, the late Stephen Hillenburg was enrolled in CalArts' Experimental Animation Program. As a student, he created his first cartoons, including "The Green Beret" (1992) seen above, which landed him his job at Nickelodeon, working on Rocko's Modern Life and, later, developing SpongeBob SquarePants.

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