Co-creators Paul Watling and Kyle Marshall and EP Seonna Hong discuss their new animated show about 2 kids learning to navigate their multi-generational Korean American Family, the second series greenlit from Nickelodeon’s Intergalactic Shorts Program.
Gamer Lily loves making chaos while wielding sticks as swords in the swamp. Her half sibling Jack likes playing life safe behind his camera, with no more than one sprinkle’s worth of risk. But as the two kids learn to navigate their blended, multi-generational Korean American family dynamics – complete with seal riding – Lily and Jack find comfort in their differences and learn from each other’s strengths.
Now available to watch on Nickelodeon, Wylde Pak, the messy, and heartwarming new series from Kid Cosmic’s Paul Watling and The Loud House’s Kyle Marshall began, as many good ideas do, over a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs.
“Kyle and I would meet every other week at Little Dom's in Los Feliz,” explains Watling. “We've worked together for a long time. We're both from Canada, came down to L.A. around the same time and would meet up and talk shop. We shared a lot of the same interests, philosophies, and passion for animation. So, we started developing ideas together and that's essentially where Wylde Pak was born, one night over spaghetti and meatballs.”
Watling and Marshall, who co-created and executive produce the Nickelodeon Animation 2D series, also shared both becoming fathers, and much of Wylde Pak’s storytelling stems from their own experiences navigating the beautiful, frightening and often nonsensical world of parenting.
“Paul became a stepfather, and my wife had given birth to our first son,” shares Marshall. “We were talking about how we had no idea what we were doing and how we were always waiting for the adult to come in the room and save us. We were swapping stories and situations, and we just thought there's something there to mine for ideas and maybe we could have our own unique spin on family dynamics.”
Wylde Pak, distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution, is the second short from Nickelodeon’s Intergalactic Shorts Program to be greenlit into a series. In the first episode of the 26-episode show, viewers are introduced to Lily Pak (Nikki Castillo), her mother Min-Ju Pak (Jee Young Han), her father William Wylde (Ben Pronsky) and her grandma Halmoni (Jean Yoon). The full house is often a mess, covered in snacks, kids art (likely Lily’s from years ago) and many, many animals, since Lily has a pet grooming business. Jack Wylde (Benjamin Plessala), William’s son, has been traveling around the world with his mom but is sent to stay at the Pak house for the summer for a chance to connect with kids his own age.
Lily and Jack have a familial warmth to their relationship right from the start, but Lily is certainly not happy to be giving up more of her space and Jack is not thrilled to be away from his mom. Meanwhile, William and Min-Ju are having panic attacks about how to create a fun summer for both kids at the last minute.
Watch the episode here:
“At our house, we would have these family dynamics that were challenging and hilarious, so we were like, ‘Why don't we put this into some of the material?’” notes executive producer Seonna Hong, background artist on projects like Hair Love… and Watling’s wife. “As Kyle and Paul were developing this show, Paul and I had conversations that helped inform some of the authenticity of the Wylde and Pak family.”
Marshall added, “We were very fortunate because Nickelodeon, right from the pilot, wanted the series to be aged up. They wanted the parents and kids and everyone to be able to watch this. So, when we started writing and working on the pilot, we liked this idea that we could bring our own stories as parents into this.”
Meant to express both the messiness and joy of life in a blended family, Wylde Pak’s animation design is full of detail, light, and lots of jagged lines.
“The pilot itself looks completely different from what this series ended up looking like,” admits Marshall. “During the development process, Jisoo Kim was our art director and, when she came on, we just talked to her about the family dynamics and how they're messy, they're beautiful, they're chaotic and we really wanted that in the characters and the backgrounds. And if you look at the backgrounds, there's a lot of scratchy lines, but on these beautiful painted backgrounds. Same with the characters. There are organic lines on the characters that have a slight movement on them. And we just always wanted everything to have this kind of life to it.”
It took three years from the initial concept for Marshall and Watling to finish the pilot and start on development for the series.
“Once we brought on Jisoo Kim, things quickly fell into place,” says Watling of the Summer Camp Island art director who also served as the visual development artist for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as well as the color supervisor on projects like Harley Quinn. “I think after that it was maybe about three or four months into the process to get the look right. Jisoo just knocked it out of the park.”
When it came to the story, Marshall says production hit their stride as early as the first half of Episode 3.
“That’s when it was all hands-on deck to finish this one episode ‘Worri World’,” notes Marshall. “But when we got that back from animation, we were like, ‘This feels like the show.’”
Ironically, both creators say it was the hardest episodes that tended to be their favorites.
“We had an incredible crew,” says Marshall. “Production, casting, the design boards, directing, the animation crew, the composers, sound designers, everybody involved was amazing. There are always bumps, especially in your first season. There are going to be some bad days. There are times when you're banging your head against the wall just thinking, ‘Man, this is going to suck.’ But we always came through and those episodes where we said, ‘This is the worst thing ever,’ ended up being some of our favorites.”
Watling adds, “It was not without a ton of heavy lifting and hard work. But I got to say, for a first season, objectively speaking, it really felt like we didn't have any crazy issues through the course of this series. Kyle’s biggest challenge was probably having to deal with me.”
Marshall interjects, “No, no. He’s only saying that because I'm the most difficult person to work with.”
There were a few late nights, some explosive moments, but, ultimately, Wylde Pak’s production was a reportedly smooth process. That’s impressive considering many more stressful productions have had far fewer episodes to deliver.
“We got 26 episodes split up into 52 stories, 11 minutes each,” explains Marshall. “A lot of shows were getting 40 or even less. And it gave us a good runway to really flesh this all out and nail these characters in the world.”
Watling notes that while the episodes can be watched separately and independently of each other, the number of episodes he and Marshall were given to work with allowed for them to build actual character arcs in the series.
“We were really lucky to get this show picked up,” says Watling. “If it had happened even a decade prior, I don’t think I personally would've been equipped with the tools to handle it the way that we did. We've both worked on a ton of productions. Some were more difficult than others. Some were extremely difficult.”
Marshall continues, “Especially with our background coming from Canada where you wear so many hats. The studios are smaller in Canada, and so you're a board artist, you're a designer, you're an animator… you do so many different things. I think it really helped when we got here. TV is quick, it's dirty. You’ve got to go with your gut and run with it.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
