On the cover

Mr. Krabs, Flying Dutchman, Plankton, Squidward, Sandy, SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick in Nickelodeon's stop-motion special, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom.
Mr. Krabs, Flying Dutchman, Plankton, Squidward, Sandy, SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick in Nickelodeon's stop-motion special, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom.

Nickelodeon is celebrating Halloween a little early this year with the introduction of its new, stop-motion special, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Legend of Boo-Kini Bottom. It premieres at 6 p.m. Friday.

The special tells the story of the Flying Dutchman (Brian Doyle Murray) who wants to make sure everyone in town is scared, especially SpongeBob, who thinks scary things are funny.

The town of Bikini Bottom is decked out in creepy Halloween finery, and the characters don costumes, with SpongeBob as a flower, Patrick as a knight, Mr. Krabs as a dollar bill and Sandy as a mad scientist.

In the classic style of stop-animation, the production uses miniature puppets, marionette puppeteering, hand puppets and 2-D hand-drawn animation to bring Bikini Bottom to life in three dimensions. They used 27 unique sets, five stages and 15 boxes of breakfast cereal to create texture on coral reefs, 8 pounds of glitter to decorate SpongeBob's Halloween pineapple house, hundreds of craft sticks to create the planks of the roller coaster track, and black lights to create a fluorescent glow across the puppets and sets.

-- Rosemary Boggs

Style on 10/08/2017

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