{"id":344417,"date":"2025-12-15T00:08:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T00:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/animation\/director-derek-drymon-talks-the-spongebob-movie-search-for-squarepants\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T00:08:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T00:08:40","slug":"director-derek-drymon-talks-the-spongebob-movie-search-for-squarepants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=344417","title":{"rendered":"Director Derek Drymon Talks ‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants’"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Derek Drymon, longtime writer and creative director of the\u00a0SpongeBob SquarePants<\/em>\u00a0series, finally got to direct the latest\u00a0Search for SquarePants<\/em>\u00a0movie (Paramount\/Nickelodeon, December 19). What intrigued him the most was exploring a more paternal relationship between Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) and SpongeBob (Tom Kenny), and reintroducing The Flying Dutchman (Mark Hamill), who sets a trap for SpongeBob to free him from his spectral ghost ship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis father-son relationship has always been touched on in certain episodes, but on this one we were able to dive into it a little bit more,\u201d Drymon said. \u201cI think you can still show those stories with humor but then watch these guys cry. And the Dutchman has been a core part of the show from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first started working with the character,\u201d he continued, \u201cI was reminded of the first Halloween episode he appeared in. And Mr. Krabs\u2019 reaction to him was terrified. He fainted. As we went on, we made him more comedic, but I wanted to go back to that moment and figure out why he fainted. I was thinking about this story from that point and gave Mr. Krabs a back story where had a relationship with Dutchman that we could tie into this movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Casting Hamill, though, was an inspiration. Drymon previously worked with him briefly on\u00a0Adventure Time, but that was purely comedic. \u201cI wasn\u2019t sure what to expect,\u201d he added, \u201cbut he had done The Joker and he was good friends with Tom Kenny, who does the voice directing. He\u2019s just this very nice, chatty guy. Millions of stories. And then he does the Dutchman voice and he\u2019s got this real gutteral attack. It was just super impressive. And then, when we did the live-action portion, he becomes a little more comedic. He\u2019s a big fan of silent comedians and we referenced Oliver Hardy. It worked really well, and I asked him if he had ever done this style of acting before. He said no but he watches them all the time and he could just pull them up.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Drymon also had high praise for Regina Hall (One Battle After Another), who voices the Dutchman\u2019s assistant, Barb, as well as Ice Spice, performs the original song, \u201cBig Guy,\u201d and also has a voice cameo.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was Regina\u2019s first time doing voiceover work and she was a little nervous about it, but Tom guided her through it,\u201d Drymon explained. \u201cHe gave her advice on how to find the character through every available sound.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It helped that Ice Spice was a big fan of SpongeBob<\/em>\u00a0and that one of her early songs was the very adult \u201cBikini Bottom.\u201d \u201cGetting her early on was great,\u201d Drymon said, \u201cand then she was asked if she could do a voice. That was something she always wanted to do, so she came in and did the ticket taker at the roller coaster, one of the aggravated Bikini Bottomites. I think she enjoyed that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But the highlight of the movie was the underworld, production designed by Pablo R. Mayer, and\u00a0\u00a0animated by Reel FX. In fact, it was one of the hooks that enticed Drymon to want to direct the film. \u201cIt was fun to be able to invent a whole new place,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd then the trick was how do we make it feel like it\u2019s been there all the time and that it belongs in Bikini Bottom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in Hawaii and I visited these lava fields and it looks like it\u2019s moving. There\u2019s an animation to it because it like froze so there\u2019s a movement to it. And then you can see faces. It\u2019s almost like looking at clouds, but they\u2019re all spooky and creepy. We took a bunch of photos and then Pablo helped put it all together. He added these Tiki bar kind of lights to it to make it feel like it belonged to the SpongeBob world, and added these underwater caves, which have a very unique look where you can see the surface and the stalactites are popping through.\u201d<\/p>\n

This surreal quality was given a Loony Tunes vibe that reminded the director of\u00a0Daffy in Wackyland<\/em>. They took a nautical object and then combined it with a creature. \u201cWe had an octopus made of ropes and jelly fish with fish jooks and anchor bats,\u201d Drymon added. \u201cThey\u2019re kind of monsters but silly in a very SpongeBob way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a tight budget and schedule, like always,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut Reel FX were great partners in figuring out this 2D-inspired CG sensibility. I worked on\u00a0Hotel Transylvania 4<\/em>, so I had some experience with that. But the [animation supervisor], Wes Mandell, told me that if it\u2019s easy in 2D, it\u2019s really hard in CG, and if it\u2019s easy in CG, it\u2019s impossible in 2D. So I had to think that way. But the good thing is that I don\u2019t know a lot about CG. So I purposely would draw things and come up with ideas and then go to Reel FX. A big trick from the show was where SpongeBob would slide his eyeball and it gives the illusion that he\u2019s looking back. That was really hard in CG. But they figured it out, which is all you can ask for with an animation partner.\u201d<\/p>\n