Turtle Seashell

Turtle Seashell (also known as Turtle) is an American animated comedy television series created by marine science educator and animator Steven Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. The series chronicles the adventures of the title character and his aquatic friends in the underwater city of Water Bottom. The fifth-longest-running American animated series, its popularity has made it a media franchise. It is the high rated series to air on Nickelodeon and it is the most distributed property from ViacomCBS Networks International.

Many of the series' ideas originated an unpublished educational book that Hillenburg created in 1989 to teach his students about undersea life. He began developing Turtle Seashell into a television series in 1996 following the cancellation of Rocky's Modern Life, and in 1997, a seven-minute pilot was pitched to Nickelodeon. He turned to Tom Kenny, who had worked with him on that series, to voice the title character. Turtle was originally going to be named TurtleBoy, and the series called Ahoy There TurtleBoy!; both of these were changed as the name was already trademarked.

Nickelodeon held a preview for the series in the United States on May 1, 1999, after it aired the 1999 Kids' Choice Awards. The series premiered on July 16, 1999. It has received worldwide critical acclaim since its premiere and had gained enormous popularity by the second season. A feature film, The Turtle Seashell Movie, was released in theaters on November 19, 2003. A second film adaptation, The Turtle Movie: Turtle Out of Water, followed on February 7, 2015. A third film and prequel to the television series, The Turtle Movie: Turtle In The Sea, was released in Canadian theaters on August 15, 2020 followed by a premiere on video-on-demand and Paramount+ on March 4, 2021. In 2018, the series began airing the twelfth season; it was renewed for a thirteenth season on July 17, 2019, which began airing in October 2020. As of July 30, 2020, all seasons of the show are available on Paramount+.

Turtle Seashell has won awards including: six Annie Awards, eight Golden Reel Awards, 18 Kids' Choice Awards, and two BAFTA Children's Awards. A Broadway musical based on the series opened in 2017 Coral Camp: Turtle's First Camp, a computer-animated spin-off series, debuted in March 2021 on the streaming service Paramount+. Two spin-off series, an untitled project based on the character Octopus Tentacles and The Starfish Show, are in development as of 2020.

Premise

The series takes place in the underwater city of Water Bottom located in the Pacific Ocean beneath the real-life coral reef known as Bikini Atoll. Its citizens are multicolored fish who live in buildings made from ship funnels and use "boatmobiles", of cars and boats, as a mode of transportation. Recurring locations within Water Bottom include the neighboring houses of Turtle Starfish and Ocotpus; two competing restaurants, the Crusty Crab and the Chum Bucket; Miss. Puff's Boating School, which includes a driving course and a sunken lighthouse; the Subdome, a submarine where Oyster lives; Shady Rest Home; a seagrass meadow called Jellyfish Fields; and Goo Lagoon, a brine pool that is a popular beach hangout.

When the Turtle crew began production of the series' pilot episode, they were tasked with designing stock locations, to be used repeatedly, where most scenes would take place like the Crusty Krab and Turtle's pineapple house. The idea was "to keep everything nautical", so the crew used rope, wooden planks, ships' wheels, netting, anchors, boilerplates, and rivets to create the show's setting. Transitions between scenes are marked by bubbles filling the screen, accompanied by the sound of rushing water.

Broadcast

Streaming

the series was streaming on Netflix. However, the series was removed in 2013 due to their deal with Viacom The series was also available to stream on Hulu starting in 2012 until the series was removed in 2015. The series later streamed on Amazon Prime Video in 2013 after the Netflix deal ended. As part of Paramount+'s rebranding plan, the series joined along with other ViacomCBS shows on 2020