 Several years after studying experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts , Hillenburg met Joe Murray , creator of Rocko 's Modern Life , at an animation festival . Murray offered Hillenburg a job as a director of the series . Martin Olson , one of the writers for Rocko 's Modern Life , read The Intertidal Zone and encouraged Hillenburg to create a television series with a similar concept . At that point , Hillenburg had not considered creating his own series , but soon realized that this was his chance . Shortly after production on Rocko 's Modern Life ended in 1996 , Hillenburg began working on SpongeBob SquarePants . 
