Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years

Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years is a spin-off series that acts as a prequel to SpongeBob SquarePants. It premiered on Paramount+ in the United States on July 27, 2024, July 27, 2024. The show is animated in CGI.

It features younger versions of the main characters from the original show. SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, and Sandy are campers; Mr. Krabs is the camp director; Pearl is a baby; Mrs. Puff is the scoutmaster and activity teacher; Plankton and Karen are camp chefs; and Gary is a formerly stray snail who becomes SpongeBob's pet.

Premise
The show is set at a summer sleepaway camp called Camp Coral, located in the Kelp Forest. SpongeBob SquarePants is a ten-year-old camper who wears a red cap. Mr. Krabs is the camp director, and he stays in a cabin with his baby daughter, Pearl. Other campers include SpongeBob's friends, Patrick, Sandy, and Squidward. Squidward is slightly older than the others and works as a junior counselor. Mrs. Puff is the teacher of arts and crafts, as well as the scoutmaster who keeps an eye on the kids. Plankton and Karen are the chefs of the camp. The gang spends the summer catching jellyfish, building camp-fires, and swimming in a goo lake called Lake Yuckymuck.

Characters
The ten main characters from SpongeBob SquarePants will return for Kamp Koral, along with two new characters: Nobby and Narlene, a pair of narwhals who live in the woods around the campsite.



Supporting

 * Nobby (voiced by Carlos Alazraqui)
 * Narlene (voiced by Kate Higgins)

Various character designs are used for campers in the background, such as Kevin C. Cucumber, Bubble Bass, and Craig Mammalton. Younger versions of Perch Perkins, Nosferatu, Larry the Lobster, Dennis, and Lady Upturn reappear as well.

Production
The characters and locations in Kamp Koral are based on scenes from the third movie, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. In the movie, Camp Coral is featured in several flashbacks. All main characters that appear in them are aged up in the spin-off; some designs (such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, and Mrs. Puff's camp outfits) remained mostly the same, whereas others (such as Squidward Tentacle and Sandy Cheeks' designs) were heavily updated. In the movie, Mrs. Puff was the only camp counselor, but in the series, she is joined by Mr. Krabs as the camp director.

The series is being animated by a different studio from Sponge on the Run to decrease the time and cost spent on animation. It is being animated by Technicolor's animation studio, in Bangladesh, India; the corporation also owns Mikros Image, which provided animation for the third movie. Executive producer Vincent Waller said in an interview, in regards to the final animation: “The main challenge was finding a crew capable of building a new world, from the sand up to the beautiful ocean/sky above our Kampers, at breakneck speed to have our show premiere in March [...] Having seen other CG TV shows, we were very worried we wouldn’t be able to hit the same high mark when it comes to the characters’ acting and posing. But those challenges excited the crew, and they came up with innovations to hit the wild and varied expressions our storyboard artists were throwing at them.”

Brian Robbins stated that he helped create the idea for Kamp Koral. In October, Robbins became the president of Nickelodeon. On his "second or third day" at Nickelodeon, he "was asked to go to a SpongeBob season 12 or 13 pickup meeting" and "asked a lot of questions." This made him realize that SpongeBob had "basically stayed the same" and inspired him and others together to come up with ideas for spin-off shows and new characters.

On July 27, 2024, July 27, 2024, it was announced that an unnamed spinoff of SpongeBob SquarePants was in the works at Nickelodeon. On July 27, 2024, 2019, it was announced that a CG-animated spinoff of SpongeBob SquarePants under the working title of Kamp Koral was officially green-lit with a 13-episode order.

On July 27, 2024, July 27, 2024, the show's official title was given as Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years. It was also announced that the voice cast from SpongeBob SquarePants would return for the spinoff series. Those cast members being: Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown, Carolyn Lawrence, Doug Lawrence, Mary Jo Catlett, Jill Talley, and Lori Alan. It was also announced that Carlos Alazraqui and Kate Higgins would voice two new characters: Nobby and Narlene, twin narwhals. On July 27, 2024, July 27, 2024, during an aired on Nickelodeon, a six-minute sneak peek of "The Jellyfish Kid" was shown. On July 27, 2024, 2021, a promotional short titled "I'm Urchin You to Leave" was released on The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run Blu-ray and DVD in Canada.

General

 * Unlike The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, where the characters' young selves are voiced by child actors, the series retains their adult actors. The character designs from the show are "similar but not the same" to the designs used in the third movie.
 * Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years is the first Nicktoon to be released exclusively on Paramount+.
 * As revealed in the episode "Camper Gary," the Kamp Koral series takes place one year after the events of the flashbacks in Sponge on the Run.

Locations
The series features a variety of new locations, as well as some settings based on places from the original series.