Jam Filled Entertainment on the expressive 2D animation in Wylde Pak

Jam Filled Entertainment has built a reputation as one of Canada’s leading animation studios, with locations across Ottawa, Toronto, and Halifax. Known for bringing hit shows like The Loud House to life for Nickelodeon, the studio’s work spans vibrant comedies to heartfelt family stories. 

One of their latest projects is Wylde Pak, a new animated series created at Nickelodeon by Kyle Marshall and Paul Watling. The show follows a blended Korean-American family navigating life in the quirky fictional town of Canyon Valley, complete with eccentric neighbours, heartfelt moments, and plenty of laughs.

To learn more about the making of Wylde Pak, we spoke with two key members of the Jam Filled team: Jamie Gallant, one of the series' animation directors, and Kyle Vermette, head of 2D builds. They shared how the studio got involved in the production, the creative choices that shaped the show’s unique look, and what it takes to bring such an expressive world to the screen.

The first episode of Wylde Pak, made available by Nickelodeon to stream on YouTube.

How did your team at Jam Filled get involved with the Wylde Pak series?

Jamie: Jam Filled has been animating Nickelodeon’s The Loud House since it started. We're on the 10th season now, so we’ve got a great working relationship with the team at Nick. Kyle Marshall is a Canadian animator who had directed The Loud House for Nickelodeon and it was him and his buddy Paul Watling who created Wylde Pak. We ended up doing a demo for them, they liked it, and so we got the gig.

What was your experience like working with Nickelodeon on Wylde Pak?

Jamie: The division of labour between client and service studio can vary. In this case The team at Nick wrote the episodes, drew the storyboards and sent us finished leica reels.

The department heads here at Jam Filled analyze the leicas and have a back and forth with Nickelodeon to make sure we're all on the same page. Our team starts work at the layout stage and we run the pipeline all the way through to compositing and editing. We then ship a finished episode back for review.

Kyle: Exactly. We get a shipment from Nickelodeon with all the designs, some storyboards, scripts, and more. From there, our layout team, background paint team, the builds team and I start breaking it down. Typically, it takes a week for each department to do their thing once we’ve received a shipment.

Jamie: There are about 90–100 Jam Filled artists who work on the show. It's a week per department on an 11-minute chunk, but there’s a lot of overlap. Builds can be working right alongside background paint. In total, we worked on 52 episodes over a year and a half. 

How similar or different was Wylde Pak compared to other productions that you worked on – does anything in particular stand out?

Kyle: It wasn’t too different from a standard production. It varies from show to show, and it will vary based on who is working on their side. The Nickelodeon team is really great because they have a lot of trust in us, and they know we had their best interests in mind. That level of trust isn’t always there, but I think it has been part of the success of the show.

Jamie: Working on the first season, as intense a workload as it was, felt pretty comfortable. A lot of the team at Jam Filled have worked together for years and worked on several productions together in a row, some of them with Nickelodeon. Production, pipeline, and staff-wise it felt very familiar.

A trailer and extended music video for Nickelodeon's Wylde Pak, demonstrating the show's visual style.

Tell us a bit about the premise of Wylde Pak. Who is this family, and what kind of world do they live in?

Jamie: There’s a line in the extended theme song that goes, “Two moms but the same daddy, now we live at the same addy.” I think this line sums it up really well!

One character, Lily, is an 11-year-old girl who lives with her parents and helps them run a pet grooming shop. She has a half-brother named Jack. The two kids have known each other their whole lives but they’ve never actually lived together and aren’t all that close. The beginning of the series has Jack getting dropped off to live with them for the summer and the show is about watching the relationship between these two kids evolve in all kinds of fun and (sometimes) awkward ways.

They live in a fictional town in the US called Canyon Valley. It’s full of eccentric characters we get to know throughout the first season. Although Canyon Valley, its inhabitants and their personalities stay consistent, the tone of their world can vary pretty greatly from episode to episode. We could be at an arcade dealing with a bully in one show, then dropped into a ‘Rear Window’ inspired murder mystery the next.

Kyle: Another fun aspect of the show is that the kids are part of a Korean-American blended family. The Dad is meant to be Canadian and the Mom is from South Korea. And so Korean culture features prominently throughout the series. 

Can you share a bit about the look and style of Wylde Pak? How would you describe it?

Jamie: It’s a very expressive show. We could see from Nickelodeon’s initial pitch bible and early storyboards that strict adherence to the model wasn’t their end goal. The series looks to me like it’s drawn by a really good artist, who’s drawing fast – giving it a loose, energetic feel. Nickelodeon used the term ‘messy’ to describe it, and it’s a cool way to describe it because it suits the Wylde Pak family. They don’t have it all together. The parents are struggling to make their business work, and the kids aren't enemies but they butt heads. The show’s style is meant to reflect that.

Kyle: Yes, it definitely has more of a hand-drawn look, and to help with the visual style we used a lot of line boil effects, compared to what you normally see in a Harmony-created show. I personally find the backgrounds of the show really gorgeous; there’s softness and texture to them.

Yes, the show really does use a lot of line boil effects! How does this effect enhance the animation and compliment the show's themes?

Jamie: The line boil adds to the handcrafted, not perfect, kind of messy but authentic-looking vibe. It complements the story quite well. Using it allowed us to make different choices with the animation movement, and it helped us to make it feel ‘imperfect.’ 

Kyle: I love how the line boil effects allow slower moments to grab your attention as a viewer. I find it does a great job of helping the visuals feel alive.

Jamie: When we were doing the demo for Wylde Pak, the head of 2D animation at Jam Filled developed a module in Harmony that just applies the line boil to everything we do. When an animator is working, they don't see it. We did have to train ourselves to be able to predict how it was going to look when we rendered it, but once we had that figured out we realized we can really use it to our advantage.

Do you have tips for animating line boils?

Jamie: If you're doing it traditionally, you need to be going fast. If it's a slow, careful trace back you'll lose the energy. It's OK if the line isn't in the exact same spot every time. You just have to pay attention to where that line is anchored, where it connects to other pieces.

Are there any other specific animation techniques that were useful for this series in particular? 

Kyle: We relied heavily on the use of deformers. Master controllers were set up for the main cast, allowing Jamie and the team to preload posing for characters, which sped up the animation team. It gave them a good base to start with as they went through their posing.

Jamie: We try to evolve our builds with every production. These builds were very versatile, which was important because it’s not always possible to push stuff off-model with a digital puppet. We also used a mixed frame rate. Most of our shows have been on twos or ones, which is a classic way to animate 2D work. Early on, it was our vision and Nickelodeon’s vision to throw that out the window and experiment with mixed frame rates.

We wanted to make our poses and expressions very specific. It’s time-consuming to do. One of my nightmares when starting the show was that we would fill it with all those great drawings ...but would not have time to move them well from one to the next and the whole thing would fall apart. The mixed frame rate was key for us to pull this off. We had fewer in-betweens and had to get creative with our breakdowns. You have fewer drawings, but the drawings that remain look much better.

Are there any particular scenes that you’re proud of, and would like to share a little bit about?

Kyle: In the episode “Just a Little Pipe Problem,” the family’s groom-and-board business is about to have an inspection. They find themselves with a plumbing problem and are racing back from the hardware store to get to the shop before the inspector does. It’s one of the most ridiculous car chase scenes. I didn’t animate it, but I rigged the car. Seeing the animation team use it to that effect made me really proud. Often cars are done in 3D because that’s a lot easier to rotate.

Jamie: That’s one of my favourite episodes too. If you haven’t seen an episode of Wylde Pak yet, I would recommend watching “The Three Ravens.” It was early on in the schedule, about 2–3 months in for the animation team. It’s about Lily and her neighbour Ellie, who is a tiny conspiracy theorist, breaking into their neighbour's creepy house trying to save Jack. The team really hit their stride on that one.

How has the reception of the series been, and what’s next for Wylde Pak?

Kyle: The reception has been really positive. My kids have seen a few episodes and they can’t wait until it starts streaming in Canada so they can see the rest. For what’s next, we’d love to do a season 2.

Jamie: My kids are loving it too!

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• Interested in seeing more from the crew at Jam Filled Entertainment? Be sure to bookmark the studio's website and careers page.
• Ready to watch the series? Wydle Pak is currently airing on Nickelodeon.
• Interested in experimenting with line boil effects on your next project? Artists can download a 21-day trial of Harmony Premium.