August 30th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
The new Netflix animated family series Sharkdog, premiering this Friday September 3rd, comes from creator Jacinth Tan Yi Ting. She came-up with the show’s concept under the most unique of circumstances… and thoroughly impressed the people at Nickelodeon and Netflix. I spoke with her over Zoom from her home in Singapore, a place I immediately wanted to visit after seeing 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: What’s the best thing about Singapore?
Jacinth Tan Yi Ting: Well, in light of this current COVID situation, the best thing would still be… how clean and safe the place is. I feel like I could go out at night and there’s no worry that I would get into any trouble. Also, this place is beautiful.’
JM: That’s what I got out of the movie too – that it’s gorgeous. So maybe someday I’ll visit you in Singapore. That would be amazing. I watched the show. It’s really fun – I enjoyed it. Families will get into it. First of all, what made you want to combine a shark and a dog?
JT: (laughs) It was kind of one of those crazy, spur of the moment ideas. By now it was probably a good six years ago. Back then I had a dog. I owned a dog. Her name was Cindy. Sadly by now she has already passed. Back then she was still in her youth years. And on one week, it was Shark Week, and I was watching Shark Week. There were sharks swimming on my screen and my dog was running around begging me to play with her. And I was just looking at… shark, dog, shark dog… and I was like, “Hmm, it would be great if I could have both at the same time and play with one.” That was kind of where the idea [came] from. Also back then we had a little bit of free time in our studio. Back then Nickelodeon was doing their global Shorts program. They were looking for pitches from Asia and I was like, “Hey, that checks all the right boxes! Let’s submit it and then see what happens!” And I guess I got really lucky.
JM: It’s amazing. What was that instant reaction when you found out that out of all 850 submissions… that you were the top choice? How did you feel in that moment of finding out?
JT: In that split-second moment, I was like, “Maybe this is a scam.” Because I couldn’t believe it. You know when you get those emails of, “Hey – you’ve won something”? You’re not sure and you refresh and check, “No, it’s true.” I was really glad and I was really surprised that Nickelodeon and Viacom (this huge company) would pick an idea that came out of me looking at the TV and my dog running around. That was a really big surprise and I was really happy and excited to be given this big opportunity.
JM: That’s an amazing story. Obviously Nickelodeon is very much into the undersea world with SpongeBob and Baby Shark and other undersea shows, so it fits right into the Nickelodeon brand. Do you always, every year, watch Shark Week on TV?
JT: Surprisingly no. I do like watching a lot of NatGeo films. I’m a big fan of David Attenborough and I’ve watched all of his documentaries. But it was just one of those things. I wouldn’t diligently, every year, watch shark documentaries like a crazy person. (laughs) It was just that one year that was just the right time!
JM: Wow. Here in America, Shark Week is a HUGE deal. And I like the episode [of Sharkdog] where you make this VR experience for Sharkdog and the family and that TV experience. Did that bring you back to the key moment [years ago]?
JT: That was actually where that episode idea stemmed from. In the past before these seven-minute episodes were released, we did 90-second episodes – 20 of them. They were released on the Nickelodeon Play app a year ago. There was this one episode… there’s this one comic strip in the pitch bible that’s this exact VR idea. They’re watching this episode and [the dad] sees this shark jumping out at him and he’s like, “Wow! Great 3D effects!” And [Max] is like, “He’s a great man but I’m glad he’s not that smart, thankfully.” That was an idea we did in the 90 seconds back then and I felt like that was the one story that in the 90 seconds was not enough time to tell the whole story we wanted. The 90-second episode ended on a cliffhanger. I just wish I had five minutes more to tell this whole entire story! So one year later, lo and behold, Nickelodeon came back and said, “We wanna make seven-minute episodes” and I was like, “We gotta have this one – flesh this one out and make it into a great, satisfying episode with a good ending.” And thankfully we did. I think the episode turned out exactly as I originally had in mind with a great resolution this time.
JM: That’s great. Why did you decide to have Sharkdog say some key words in English in the episodes?
JT: That whole conversation about how Sharkdog speaks came a long way. In my original idea when I first came-up with the pitch bible, he didn’t speak at all. Once you translate [comics] into animation… back then there were only Max and Sharkdog. There weren’t friends [and others]. And we found that if Sharkdog doesn’t speak, Max is gonna be monologuing a lot, all the time. No one really wants to watch an animation where your character is monologuing his expressions and monologuing what his pet is thinking. We felt like Max needed someone to bounce his ideas off of and also didn’t really want Max to always be the one that’s narrating how Sharkdog’s feeling. We really wanted Sharkdog to be able to express for himself what he’s thinking and feeling. That slipped into the conversation of, “Okay, we now know Sharkdog needs to speak. But how much should he speak?” I feel this balance that we found is great because he’s kind of able to communicate how he feels, but at the same time not totally… he’s still able to retain his animalistic growls and yells. It was very important as well when we were creating our voice casting for our actor to understand the growls and grunts.
JM: Every point you’re making is so fantastic. You mentioned having a dog and I would imagine many of your crew members on this show have or had pets. How did you want to infuse that bond between a bond and a pet into this series?
JT: I got my dog Cindy at a very young age. I think I was 12 or 13. How all children get dogs at a young age is pester their parents incessantly for 10 or 12 years and then you finally get a dog at age 12! When I first got my dog as a really young puppy, that was when we spent endless amounts of time together because there weren’t other commitments in life. It was just basically school… I couldn’t wait for school to end so I could come home and play with my dog… you always want to spend [a lot of] time with your dog – whatever you’re doing. You can be reading a book or watching TV but you want your dog to sit next to you. The best thing about having a dog is that they’re always 100% interested in whatever you wanna do. They don’t even question what it is. They’re like, “Yes! Let’s do it! What is it? What are we doing?” They agree 100% ahead of time. That’s a very special bond between a human and their pet. There’s this trust that is unbroken. Sometimes they might bite something or want your attention when you don’t have that time and that’s sometimes the frustration with having a dog. But at the end of the day, no matter whether they poop on your pillow… which my dog did once. But there’s this unbreakable bond I feel you experience growing-up with your dog and it lives with you even after your dog has passed. You always remember those times. And it was those moments we really tried to make sure were etched into each Sharkdog episode.
JM: And I also really like that you create an arc for the season. You have this ‘capturing Sharkdog’ element of drama and suspense. And we get to the finale with these climactic scenes. It’s rare these days in animation television to have a season with a real beginning, middle and end like that. It’s usually 10, 11 or 22 separate episodes that have a little bit of a theme but not as much as yours. Why did you feel it was important to make a real arc for this season of the show?
JT: Even from the beginning… I always saw it as a show with a series arc. But at the same time, like you were mentioning, in the industry sometimes shows that have a strong series arc become very difficult to broadcast because it has to be done in a certain broadcasting order. Sometimes it becomes this conflict with the broadcasters and how it wants to be displayed. For Sharkdog, we found this little sweet spot with each episode. You’re able to watch each as a standalone. Let’s say someone wanted to watch Episode 8, for whatever reason… and after that they watch Episode 3… they would still be able to enjoy each episode as a standalone and not feel like they missed something or don’t understand certain parts. I’m really glad that what we have is able to fulfill both criteria where people can sit down, watch an episode and understand and laugh. They don’t need to worry about the bigger story if they don’t want to. But for those who watch sequentially from Episode 1 to 20… there will be this bigger story that is a little bigger reward for people to get at the end of the season.
JM: Yes. You also did the storyboard for [some of] the episodes. What did you enjoy the most about doing the storyboarding?
JT: We have a team of eight people here at One Animation. I’m the lead story artist. I work closely with them to finalize how to capture moments, expressions and moods in scenes in each episode. I did storyboard some of the episodes myself and I feel like the most interesting thing – why I’m very drawn to storyboarding – is I feel like you’re able to… dictate how to exactly place your camera and capture the feeling and the story.
JM: I feel like just the name ‘Sharkdog’ will quickly get into people’s minds. They’ll enjoy watching the show and it will stick with them. Every time they think about sharks and dogs, they’re gonna put it together. What would it mean to you for the word ‘Sharkdog’ – and the show Sharkdog – to be as common in people’s minds as SpongeBob?
JT: That would be insane. I grew-up with SpongeBob. It was that thing that saved me from Math class – that thing you look forward to when you don’t want to do Chinese class or all your other lessons. For me, SpongeBob is like ‘The Dream’. And if one day Sharkdog reaches that kind of publicity where it can actually be an escape for children from other things they don’t wanna do in life, that would be crazy. It would be the dream. I would have no words. ‘How did this ever happen?’ It was just a small little moment when my dog was running around while I was watching Shark Week!
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