Emily Brundige is the Emmy and Annie nominated creator of the new animated family series Goldie, adapted from her 2019 short. It premieres Friday Feb. 14 on AppleTV+. Brundige shares the story and visual inspirations for her show, along with the impact of also working on Hilda and Over the Garden Wall. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: It started as an animated short for you in 2019, and now it’s a 13-episode Apple series. How does it feel to go from a short to a full series like this?

Emily Brundige: It feels great. It was always my plan to pitch Goldie as a kids series, and it’s one of those things that just worked out, and that feels great.

JM: That’s amazing. I’m so thrilled for you. The show is fun. It’s sweet. It looks great. Goldie is a giant girl living in the town of Boysenberg. How does the concept speak to you and how did you want to evolve it right away when it came to the short and now this series?

EB: Well, I think it came from a place of being a woman… in society, feeling a little bit squashed. I just wanted to create a female character who took up space. And so immediately I thought, “Well, just by creating this giant girl character, I’m creating this female character who’s undeniable.” She’s there. (laughs) I feel like we’ve never had a “Clifford” human giant character. “Why hasn’t anyone done this?” It would be awesome to have a giant girl that kids can look up to as a role model. So that was kind of my motivation for the short, but with the show, I felt like I could really expand the universe, obviously. Not just tell stories about Goldie but about her friend, Teeny, who’s the tiniest girl in Boysenbeg, and the Mayor, who’s their friend and has his own hang ups. And they’re all kind of helping each other deal with their big emotions.

JM: There’s a great group of characters in this, and I love that Clifford comparison. That feels right, tonally. I really enjoyed the fact that in the first episode, we learn about Goldie’s origin story in a unique way. We get some dialogue from the mayor and then we also get this backstory song from Goldie in the second half of the episode. That’s a unique way of coming into an origin story, but I like that. That’s refreshing.

EB: Thank you. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite songs. It’s still really a touch of me. I love the relationship between Goldie and Romeo, her bird companion. I didn’t want to start from zero, where Goldie comes into the town and then she’s getting to know everyone — and it’s that slow build. I just wanted to come into the world with Goldie already having grown up there.

JM: And you mentioned her friends. We’ve got Teeny and Petey. How over these episodes for families watching this on AppleTV+ are they going to enjoy this dynamic… this friendship between this trio?

EB: I think they’ll enjoy just how caring they are to each other and how they kind of help each other see that being different is something to celebrate. And the whole town… the show has a strong community sense to it. So they all care about each other and their community and town of Boysenberg. And the mayor is more of a really personable friend to the citizens of Boysenberg. And then there’s a little lady named Mrs. Petunia who’s the only character on the show who’s mean. And she can be really mean. So I really enjoy that. But as the season goes on, we start to pull back the layers a little bit on Mrs. Petunia.

JM: Yes. She’s kind of feisty. I love the look of the town, too. The architecture, the way the homes are designed, the colors of it all. What kind of work went into making a really nice looking community?

EB: Thank you. My art director for the short film, his name’s German Orozco. I originally wanted the inspiration to be kind of a European town. I get a lot of inspiration from Pippi Longstocking, so kind of that feel of a town that she lived in. I want it to be really colorful, but kind of a unique color palette, and German first really delivered on that look. And my art director for the show, Ross Love, took that and really built it up into a three dimensional world — and figuring out all the rules of that world. Flowers are kind of digital dots and… Goldie can interact with rainbows and clouds, being a giant.

JM: I wanted to ask you about proportion, because obviously Goldie is a giant. What were the challenges of the proportions of everything?

EB: I think that was a big challenge. I noticed that you interviewed Natasha Kline, who’s my friend, who created “Primos”.

JM: Yes!

EB: She actually storyboarded the short. I felt like she was starting to figure out how to deal with showing Goldie and her friends. And our director on the show, Graham McDonald, really made it a big point of showing different sample shots. The biggest challenge, I think, was in the shots that we had to show a group shot of Goldie and her tiny friends. Obviously a wide shot won’t work for that. So it was kind of finding those nice angles that give us everything we want.

JM: You’re an Annie nominee for “Big Nate” and an Emmy nominee for “Hilda”. How did your work on those shows prepare you to take on your own show here with “Goldie”?

EB: That’s a good question. I think those shows in particular had good, strong leaders with strong voices, and experiences like that helped inform how I wanted to be as a showrunner. So kind of seeing how I could be nurturing and supportive while also making my vision really clear to everyone. And holding true to that, even though it’s a very collaborative thing making an animated show. It’s like everyone’s baby. Everyone’s pouring their hearts into it. So showing appreciation for everyone on the crew too is really important.

JM: Nice. You got a community in the show. You got the community working on the show. And in addition to all of this, you have done some voice acting, including Sara on “Over the Garden Wall”, which I consider one of the great miniseries, live-action or animated, in television. How have you seen the lasting impact of it over the past decade?

EB: Well, it’s interesting. Particularly for “Over the Garden Wall” and “Hilda”, even when I came on and it wasn’t on the air yet, I just had a feeling of, “This is a really special series” for both of those. I was just grabbed with “Over the Garden Wall” — its uniqueness and the music being kind of turn of the century. Two examples where I just felt blessed to be a part of it. And with Sara, it was kind of a fluke casting decision. Patrick McHale needed to cast the part right away. I think there was a record coming up. A mutual friend of ours, Nick Cross, I think, played him one of my YouTube videos, and he thought that I would be perfect for the role. And it was a lot of fun.

JM: You knocked it out of the park. That whole show is great. This show is great. “Goldie” is debuting on Valentine’s Day. So because of that, what do you hope families *love* the most about the experience watching your show?

EB: I hope that it gives families and kids kind of a warm hug that wraps all around them — and that it feels like a really colorful, friendly, inclusive escape from whatever they’re dealing with in their lives.