Derek Drymon

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Derek Drymon (born November 19, 1968) is an American animator, writer, storyboard artist, director, comedian, and producer. He has worked on numerous animated cartoon productions.

Derek Drymon was born in New Jersey. He attended Jefferson Township and Dover public schools as a child and enjoyed drawing and making comic books. Drymon graduated from Jefferson Township High School in 1987. Drymon attended the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, where he majored in illustration, sharpening his drawling skills and moving from still images to animation. He graduated from SVA in 1992.

Drymon obtained an internship with Disney on the strength of his life drawings.

Drymon was discovered by Nickelodeon in 1993. He moved to California to work as an animator for Nickelodeon. In 1993, Drymon also began working as a storyboard artist and writer for Rocko’s Modern Life. It was here he met two of his future employers, Tim Hill, Chris Savino and Stephen Hillenburg; Hill was a writer, Hillenburg a co-producer and storyboard artist. In 1997, Hillenburg created SpongeBob SquarePants. Drymon performed many duties on SpongeBob, including being a writer on all episodes, the creative director, and, on his last season with the show, supervising producer. Drymon also worked on the Cartoon Network animated series Camp Lazlo. Drymon worked on Tim Hill’s side project, the popular KaBlam! skit Action League Now!, as a storyboard artist. He also wrote the Emmy Award-nominated episode of CatDog “Doggone”.

Drymon met Stephen Hillenburg on the Nickelodeon cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life. Hillenburg recalled Drymon as “one of the main people in the genesis of SpongeBob”. Drymon teamed up with Hillenburg, Hill, and Nick Jennings who was also a companion from Nickelodeon. Drymon was the creative director for the first three seasons and became Supervising Producer in season 3 until being replaced by Paul Tibbitt starting in season 4. Along with Stephen Hillenburg, Drymon approved the writers’ ideas and outlines for episodes and controlled the creative and production process on SpongeBob.

Drymon was eventually promoted to Executive producer on television show Adventure Time, and became a lead writer and director for DreamWorks Pictures, Illumination Entertainment, Sony Pictures Animation and Rovio Animation. During the first three seasons of SpongeBob, Drymon being a creative director allowed him to work with executive story editor Merriwether Williams and the rest of the writing team.

Staff writer Kent Osborne responded to the writing process with Drymon and other writers by saying “By the third season we had done 26 half-hours. I came up with millions of ideas.” Despite the issues with writing new episodes, Drymon collaborated with the writers to create episode ideas like the half-hour specials and episodes that focused on other characters, for example the season three episodes “The Algae’s Always Greener” and “Plankton’s Army” focused on Sheldon Plankton and “Doing Time” focused on Mrs. Puff. Drymon said in an interview “Coming up with episode ideas was always tough”.