In The SpongeBob Movie: The Search for Squarepants, SpongeBob follows a mysterious, swashbuckling ghost pirate known as the Flying Dutchman on a seafaring adventure that takes him to the deepest depths of the ocean. Picture Shop Senior Colorist Mitch Paulson worked closely with Production Designer Pablo R. Mayer to protect the iconic personality of SpongeBob while expanding the scale, texture, and mood for the film.
“We aimed to create a look that feels handmade and tactile, with rich textures and surfacing versus clean, minimalistic models and environments. The goal was to stay true to the show’s origins: bright, colorful, playful, and instantly recognizable, while pushing the visual language into a more cinematic space,” describes Mayer. “We wanted to balance classic SpongeBob energy with greater depth and immersion. The lighting is grounded in reality, giving the environments and characters a sense of scale and dimensionality, while still allowing the world to feel bold and graphic. As we move into the Underworld adventure, the mood becomes more dramatic, immersive and cinematic.”
That evolution in visual tone became a guiding thread in color finishing, where Paulson and Mayer shaped the look.
“I worked very closely with Mitch during color finishing to really dial in the final look of the film,” says Mayer. “A big focus was making the colors pop in a bold, graphic way while still keeping everything balanced and cohesive. Mitch’s movie experience helped us give the film a polished, cinematic feel without losing the warmth and vibrancy that are essential to SpongeBob. We also took advantage of color to push certain sequences, like the auto-parts store, the siren, and other heightened moments, to feel more intense and dramatic, reinforcing the cinematic scale of the story. One particularly important aspect was maintaining consistency in SpongeBob’s yellow. Across different lighting scenarios, we made sure his hue stayed stable and pleasing, so he always felt familiar and on-model, no matter how much the mood or environment shifted around him.”
Achieving that stability required extensive mattes. And to ensure the film’s most cinematic moments translated at the highest level, Paulson completed a Barco HDR Cinema pass. The result is a feature that feels bigger and richer without losing what audiences love: a colorful, handcrafted universe with real dimensionality, shaped through close collaboration between design and color from first intention through final frame.
The film is currently available in theaters and on digital.