Joe Murray

Joe Murray (born May 3, 1961 in San Jose, California) is an animator, best known as the creator of Rocko's Modern Life.

Murray was raised in Australia. Ever since the age of 5, Joe's goal was to be an artist of occupation. He was a designer at an agency, and at the age of 20 opened up his own studio doing commercial illustration, and later, animation. He funneled the money into independent animated films. His animation department grew and soon, he found himself the creator and executive producer for Rocko's Modern Life which aired on Nickelodeon for over 5 years in the 1990s and is currently in syndication. After completing 52 episodes of Rocko he took a break from the animation business and produced a couple of children's books. Last year, he decided to venture back into TV animation and produced a pilot for the Cartoon Network called "Camp Lazlo" which has been picked up for a 13 episode first season.

Although Murray is highly credited for his work on Rocko's Modern Life, he is often falsly overshadowed by his former employee Stephen Hillenburg. The future SpongeBob SquarePants creator worked as a writer, director and storyboard artist on Rocko, and many people believe he was the creator, but this is not true.