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A few years after studying experimental animation at the California Institute of the Arts, Hillenburg met Joe Murray, creator of the Nickelodeon series "Rocko's Modern Life", at an animation festival, and was offered a job as a director of the show. 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 even considered creating his own series. However, he realized that if he ever did, this would be the best approach. Production on "Rocko's Modern Life" ended in 1996. Shortly afterwards, Hillenburg began working on "SpongeBob SquarePants".