The Visual Charm of Sponge On The Run

Over the course of about 17 years Spongebob Squarepants and his friends have graced the silver screen in three feature films. 

While the first movie was fully 2D animated and the second movie utlized both 2D and 3D animation, the third movie took a much different apporach stylistically: It was the franchise's first fully computer animated film. 

Entitled "The Spongebob Movie: Sponge On The Run" and directed by series vetrean Tim Hill, the movie takes inspiartion from the "road trip" plot fo the first film and the plot of the "Where's Gary?" special as Spongbob and Patrick head to "The Lost City Of Atlantis City" to rescued Gary after he is kidnapped by an evil king. 

While the film's story isn't nearly as grand scale as the previous two films, the one big thing it does have that amps up the underwhelming story it is working with is its animation. Done by Mikros Animation, who did the animation for Dreamwork's "Captain Underpants", the CG offers a visual charm that feels clearly pulled from a certain area of Spongebob if you really analyze it. 

That charm being the style of the first three seasons of Spongebob. 

Throughout the 22 years that Spongebob has been around, in both the show and the movies, his design has change in some way or another for each season and show. In terms of the movies, the look of the first film felt very much like it's own thing meant for that feature: Flat, but very expressive with the designs. The look of the second movie took the designs of the first half of seasons nine and gave them some shading for a more "theatrical" look. The same can also be applied to the CG look of the characters in the second film.

But Sponge On the Run is the first film in the franchise to go back to the basics. To go back to what many consider the "classic" era of the franchise. If you look at how Spongebob looks in CG in this image and compare it to his original 2D design in the first season, there's a clear similarity.  

This philosophy of "going back to the basics" pretty much goes for the designs of all the characters in the film. Everyone looks like a CG version of their original design and it really makes the movie feel like a a throwback to those early seasons. That charm of when the show first started, where many where first introduced to Spongebob and his world. 

There also even visual references to certain faces done in some episodes of the early seasons brought to life in CG. Such as this expression from "The Night Shift"

In addition to the designs of the characters, the animators also implemented the use of airbrush and smear frames to give the animation the look of 2D from the early seasons and bring it into computer generated imagery. 

The passion and effort to have the visual style of this movie evoke the look and designs of early season by Tim Hill and the team of Mikros Animation really makes the movie a blast to watch from start to finish and a homage to where it all started. Even if the story is lackluster in comparison to the previous two films.