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http://korraspasm.tumblr.com/post/8171363411
Roland Poindexter: …Last year and didn’t appear on a panel like comic con so I didn’t get a chance to do this. Now I’ve worked up the energy to do it since it’s been two years now so I’m all ready and I’ll start out with my traditional welcome. Good afternoon Comic Con San Diego 2011! My name is LOOK UP NAME and I’m senior vice president current animation for Nickelodeon and you know actually I really want to start this out by thanking you. Nickelodeon and this is very important, Nickelodeon has enjoyed a lot of success obviously over the years and certainly over the last couple of years and that is all because of you the great fans of all the things that we do including Spongebob and Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy and Chum Chum. even a little show called iCarly and so I really want to thank you guys for all the support you’ve given the network and the company through the years and especially for your undying, unceasing, incredible love for Avatar; The Last Airbender. Because of all the phone calls, because of all the emails, because of the non stop demands, we sat down with Mike and Bryan and we said dudes, you guys gotta do something else. They said ok, we can put a little something together and you know, they have and I’m really excited for them to share it with you today and again thank you all for attending today and you know what that’s enough of the thank you, lets get on to the good part. And you know, before we start, you know, we’re just going to give you as much as we possibly can today.
One of the great things about Avatar and Legend of Korra and just this whole experience here at Comic Con is all of the costumes that we see, both at the panel and [cheering]. We know that you guys have been dying to see what Korra looks like and we have a couple of pieces of artwork online but we actually brought our own live Korra. So next year, if anybody wants to put together their own korra suit, you’ve got a high bar. So with that, without further delay, let me bring up the executive producer of The Last Airbender; The Legend of Korra Bryan Konietzko. I am also pleased to bring up the other executive producer and creator of Avatar The Last Airbender and The Last Airbender; Legend of Korra, Michael Dante DiMartino. One of my favourite people to have worked with on this and other shows is here today as well and he’s an incredible talent. He’s the co-executive producer of Legend of Korra, Joaquim Dos Santos. And I think that this team here would be the first ones to tell you that our supervising director is an incredible, INCREDIBLE talent. You’re going to get a chance to hear from him today and believe me, you’re going to get a chance to marvel at his work in this incredible series, Mr. Ryu, the supervising director. And I don’t know if you guys have ever done this but sometimes you can just, you can almost, sort of…even though these guys write great dialogue and they produce an amazing picture, you can kind of close your eyes and just listen to the music of Avatar. It gives me goosebumps. We have the incredible duo that produce all of the music and are the sound designers for the entire series, The Track Team, Ben Whynn and Jeremy Zukerman. I’m going to shut up now and let the guys take it away.
Michael Dante DiMartino: Thank you, everyone for coming and supporting us and supporting this new series that you haven’t even seen yet so that’s [inaudible]. It’s very cool to be here again.
Audience Member: YOU GUYS RULE!!
Bryan Konietzko: You guys rule, seriously. You’re the best fans and we did a panel, the track team invited us to a panel on Thursday and afterwards one of the producers of the other shows was like, your fans are really passionate. We later found out that most of the room was, you know, full of Avatar fans. So thanks for coming out.
Mike: So we’re going to get started right away. We’re gonna, we have a trailer to show you. We know you’re very excited about the trailer so we’re going to show it first, then we’re going to talk about the show a little bit, then at the very end we’ll show it again because I know there’s going to be screaming so if you miss something the first time just hold tight til the end because we’ll show it again.
Bryan: And we did this Studio Mire [note: I couldn’t hear it so someone correct me], it’s a new studio but it’s comprised of a lot of the great animators we’ve worked with since the pilot, so you’ll recognise some of the style, but you know, with [inaudible], Joaquim, Ryu, really high up in the creative team, I think you’ll see an increase in the sophistication of everything. It’s just been a dream working with these guys and all our friends in Korea and so we’re really excited to show this too you. Play the tape.
Trailer.
Bryan: I think you’ll guys hear that part the second time round. Over the years we’ve gotten a lot of fan mail which is always great and a lot of fun to read but uh sometimes, you know, it’s pretty bossy, someone telling us what to do, and I have to admit that we’ve been working so hard, we’re all really busy, and I’ve uh stopped opening the fanmail because like, two out of three letters, was like WE DON’T WANT KORRA, stop making this series! So we appreciate the enthusiasm for our work but I just had to stop opening the mail. So don’t send those kind of letters. But anyways, I just brought it up because it’s really nice to hear your reaction to the show we’ve been slaving over.
Mike: We’re really excited to be back, developing this world again, in a whole new way. For Bryan and I the exciting part is to be in this world and be able to expand it, as much as we love the old characters, we love Aang, we love Katara and they’re awesome, you know creatively it’s just like so inspiring to like dive back into this world in a new location, new time period, it’s 70 years later, a lot of new themes dealing with korra, dealing with air bending, spirituality and such. It’s really exciting to explore that and think you guys will dig it.
Bryan: When we put together The Art of Avatar book, you know, as satisfying as that was and really nice to tell the story in a personal way and look at all the art we’ve created. You know, the artist in me just couldn’t help as I went through this stuff going, we could do this better now, you know, we could make all this stuff better so doing a whole new kind of fresh take in the Avatar world gives us a chance to improve all the art direction in the animation and everything so that’s been the big challenge and that’s why we brought these guys on as the co-exect and supervising director. Man, Mike and I have just been trying to keep up with them. They are, it’s just, first few moments were just humiliating. Trying to like, design with these guys ‘cause Joaquim and Ryu were there from the ground up, Rolin [note: need a correction on this name] and Megan, you know, brought us in, and said they wanted a new series, and gave us pretty much free run with what we wanted to do creatively and the most important thing was like, we gotta get Joaquim and Ryu, or else we can’t do this. So these guys sacrificed a lot to come work with us, and we really appreciate it so.
Joaquim Dos Santos: It was totally our honour to be asked in the first place to come onto the show and Bryan is lying when he says he’s trying to keep up with us. The idea and I think the cool thing about this production that makes it unique from other shows I’ve been a part of, really a lot of the other shows that are out is that, you know, the top leads are all artists so the art sort of, the integrity is maintained from the top all the way through the production cycle. And it’s a really unique position for us to be in and I think it’ll show, you know, in the series when it premieres but, you know, more importantly then that it sort of, permeates the industry and hopefully makes everybody and every show in the industry better for it and I think that something the original series did when I went onto it, I was a fan, and I went to you guys because I loved the way the show looked so hopefully we’re continuing that tradition. Should we?
Bryan: Yeah we can…shall we jump into the art? Cool. We’re going to do the laptop. So one thing we wanted to do when we were, you know, revamping the world was, bring a little more sophisticated style to the character design. Change the proportions a bit, then Joaquim and Ryu are both amazing designers so from the get go Mike and I were like, they want to do a new series ehh, then we were like oh man, we started having ideas, you know, and the first thing, and we said this in a few interviews, we really wanted Korra to be different to Aang, so, let’s [inaudible] the next avatar so she’s just totally different to Aang, other than being female, just different in her personality and everything so that’s also really refreshing for Mike and I. We’d be writing a scene, and just stop and pinch ourselves and say, Aang would never have said this, Aang never would have done this, and that’s fun. So the other thing that we wanted, I didn’t want to design, I didn’t want to do a sketch and send it over to Joaquim and have them interpret it. We just told them on the phone our idea for the character and I think, 10 minutes later he sent us the first image so I wanted Joaquim and Ryu to really be in on the ground up, and you’ll see, mostly their work up here. So, take it away.
Joaquim: Alright, and before we go on, you’re going to notice that a lot of the set up here is me doing a little kind of, goofy sketch and Ryu taking that sketch and making it one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. So that’s sort of the theme for this presentation. So while we’re in our meetings, Ryu tends to do a lot of caricatures, and the first one that he did when we first started this was setting up this moment right here.
Joaquim: And yeah, I think you got it pretty well buddy.
Bryan: Ryu draws me like, really evil. Ryeehh!
Joaquim: And that’s, that’s the crew. The art crew. I look like an angry Hank Hill or something.
Joaquim: That was my first initial concept of Korra. Bryan said she’s gotta be tough, she’s from the Water Tribe. As you can see her hair is nothing like it is but the bones of the characters are there. The main themes for the character are there.
Bryan: And I think we talked about, we kinda wanted her to look like a snowboarder, you know, like a cool tomboy, tough, athletic.
Joaquim: The idea was to break the conventions of what, you know, female super heros, she’s tough, she’s rugged.
Joaquim: That was a second concept. Just goofin’ round, just playing with ideas, trying to get the shapes down, the ideas across, and the attitude as well.
Joaquim: And that was I think that was the first basic turn that we did. You’ll see her facial style is nothing like the Avatar universe you’ve come to know and I think initially we were playing with going a little more broad in terms of style. But Ryu being, you know, a super star animator and director from Korea, made sure to let us know, you know, not every character can be completely unique looking, there needs to be like a through line, that every artists, because there’s so many, you know, animators in Korea, so every artist could understand and draw the character a bit more easily. So she looks different here but again, the idea is there.
Joaquim: That’s a close up on her attitude.
Bryan: That was the one that we, even though we hadn’t necessarily pinned down the style and all the details, we were like, that’s her. That’s definitely her spirit. That’s her attitude.
Joaquim: That was Ryu’s first turn. You can see she already started taking a lot closer, you know, a turn, a lot closer to the model you know now as Korra that’s been released in the press art and stuff. Did you have an ideas when you were…?
Ki-Hyun Ryu: Frankly, I had no idea. We were so much busy so the time, we were crazy.
Joaquim: It was a crazy time.
Ryu: I don’t even remember.
Joaquim: Ryu draws better than all of us in his sleep so have this stuff he won’t remember.
Joaquim: I think this was kind of, this was you taking Ryu’s design?
Bryan: I had done, underneath you can kind of see a transparent, concept thing…because Korra already water, fire, and earth bends and Ryu was inspired by that drawing to do this overlay which really helped us get closer to the final model. These are Ryu’s drawings.
Joaquim: Seven heads high. This is the basic proportion. Again I think we ended up, kinda making her a bit thicker, a bit more brawny.
Bryan: In the old series, the heads were. I mean when I go back and look, they’re so big. They’re like lollipop heads. I have a small head so I relate to these characters.
Joaquim: But the characters are, I mean, you know, classically the characters were a lot younger, they were aged down. She’s 16?
Bryan: 17. Most of our main characters are older than our other crew.
Joaquim: So, some expressions. Again, Ryu just going crazy and inspiring all of us.
Joaquim: That’s the official turn. And this was, really a comunation of all of us, throwing our art into the pot, then Bryan taking it all and bringing it all together for this model. So it’s got elements from my drawings, from Ryu’s drawings and Bryans drawings.
Bryan: I just glued together.
Joaquim: He’s lying, total liar. But again, what I think that sort of lends itself to is the idea that on this production, even the creative leads at the top were all throwing in artistically, which is a great help, a benefit to the entire production.
Joaquim: There she is all coloured up.
Joaquim: Close up. She’s beautiful.
Bryan: This is the one we went with.
Joaquim: I love her bellybutton. That’s Ryu. This is what Ryu does all day long. He’s crazy.
Joaquim: You got something to say about this?
Michael: All Avatars need a team, of course. So when we were developing Korra, and thinking about who was , you know, who were her friends gonna be, we kinda of wanted to encapsulate that it’s taking place 70 years after the original series, it’s in a very much more modern metropolis sort of city. The world is a little different place. Like now there’s benders living together in a city with non benders. It’s kind of a much more like, New York or…it’s a melting pot of all different cultures and stuff. So there’s still the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation but there’s still one place called The United Republic where everyone comes together. It’s a place that Aang and Zuko founded back in the day after the war. It’s, that’s nice.
Bryan: So we came up with these brothers and, really early on we said they’re brothers, and they’re from a multicultural family if you will. So one of them is a fire bender, one is an earth bender. Answers a lot of questions we got through the years about how that works. So you know, here we have the best designers, you know, we’re like, there’s these cool brothers, and he’s like, ok we got it.
Joaquim: And this was his first drawing.
Michael: And we were like, Ryu, what does this mean? What is this character?
Joaquim: This guy goes to clown school.
Ryu: I think it looks cool.
Bryan: We were like, he was like, what’s wrong? I loved it. Not that it isn’t a beautiful drawing but…
Michael: Ryu can draw the craziest character and it looks amazing but it’s not exactly the type character we were going for when we were thinking of Bolin.
Joaquim: So this was Ryu’s, it looks like, to us, it was fantastic but very Final Fantasy maybe?
Bryan: A little over the top. A little like a magician or something.
Joaquim: So this was my first concept that sort of brought them into the era that the story was taking place in. Again, my style is not good…
Bryan: Stoppp.
Joaquim: But the idea is there.
Joaquim: That was another…
Bryan: Yeah, it’s kind of a 1920’s, like jazz age, Shanghai, Manhattan, thing so Joaquim was doing these really cool, like, Dickons, you know, Old World concepts and stuff so, with the clothing and so, with that information, Ryu…
Joaquim: He took it and started killing on it.
Bryan: Reining it in.
Joaquim: This is a little closer. I love the pony tail that just comes out of no where.
Bryan: A little spig of hair.
Joaquim: Boom.
Bryan: It gets a bit crazy.
Bryan: And crazier. We’re like Ryu, it’s like the 20’s, come on, you know, this isn’t Twilight. This is research and development.
Bryan: So this is the one we liked.
Joaquim: That’s the one we went with.
Bryan: And if you’re wondering, we did name him after Mako, the great actor.
Joaquim: Mako’s basic proportions. He’s a beautiful man.
Bryan: Very tall.
Joaquim: This is colour for him. I think one thing that was really cool, and this was a direct direction, was that the colour palette for the characters living in the city reflected again, that era, that sort of, industrial revolution type era. So the colours are more subdued.
Bryan: Oh, and just to be clear, I was all the art director on the first series but this time around, Ryu, Joaquim and I shared that responsibility so just a lot of dividing and conquering. I tended to do, and still do more of the colour, and these guys tended to do more of the design but we all, you know, pitch in a little [inaudible] it’s just very collaborative.
Joaquim: It’s good.
Joaquim: So this is his brother Bolin.
Bryan: Ryu was like, I get it now.
Michael: So where is Mako is kind of the brooding, a little bit Zukoish maybe.
Bryan: Not quite Zuko, he’s less brooding.
Michael: He’s a little lighter. Bolin is his younger, goofier brother. And he’s 19.
Bryan: He’s kind of, you know, if you’ve heard the commentary and stuff, you know our original concept for Toph was a male character who was kind of big, not the sharpest tool in the shed and Andy had the awesome idea to make Toph a smaller girl, which was great, became one of my favourite characters. That said, we still had a lot of ideas for this guy so he found a place in this series.
Joaquim: How did you come up with this character?
Bryan: His hair reminds me of a duck.
Ryu: I told you, I can’t remember that.
Bryan: He wanted Mako’s hair to go forward, and Bolins to go back.
Bryan: So he says, guys I get the feeling of drawing Bolin, so he’s starting to get the character done.
Joaquim: It’s almost there.
Joaquim: So there’s Bolin. He could still be sorta cool.
Bryan: Yeah he’s cool.
Bryan: Ryu’s expression sheets are amazing, so alive.
Michael: My favourite, you probably saw it. He’s reading a book called How to be a Man.
Bryan: With Aang on the cover.
Joaquim: So there he is in all his glory.
Bryan: I’m so happy to work on a show with spats.
Joaquim: And there they are all together.
Bryan: So I can not keep up with Joaquim and Ryu on the character design but I can kinda draw animals so…
Joaquim: He can definitely draw animals.
Bryan: So if you’ve read the Art of Avatar book you’ll know that one of the three original characters in the first concept was this bipedal polar bear dog character and so, kind of like Bolin, we found a place for that character in this series. So as you saw in the trailer, this is Naga, you know, Korra’s best friend and it’s a girl, just for reference.
Bryan: It’s also inspired by the dogs that we each have.
Michael: In some poses, especially when Bryan draws it, it look exactly like our dogs.
Joaquim: So it’s like polar bear in the front, lab in the back, golden retriever in the back.
Bryan: And it’s got the dog ears.
Bryan: Naga’s awesome. She kicks a lot of butt.
Joaquim: That one especially looks like your dogs.
Bryan: Yeah that looks like our dogs.
Bryan: So another character that we’ve been kickin’ around for some stuff finally found a home in this series and this is Pavo and he’s a red panda and a black footed ferret. This is just an early, early concept for the initial pitch and then some more development.
Bryan: And he’s Bolins little buddy. And he’s called a fire ferret which is, one of the names for a red panda is a fire fox so it’s kind of a little play on that.
Bryan: And as you saw in the trailer, there’s a slightly different species of flying bison, you know, just some subtle differences in the horns and in the pattern. The idea is that Aang found a kind of herd of these things that survived after the war.
Bryan: And, the colour is a bit different, it was kind of a chance for me to upgrade some things, kind of update the model and stuff.
Joaquim: Anatomically it’s much more sort of…
Bryan: Yeah, when I look at the old models, I just cringe.
Joaquim: I would hear him in his office as he was flipping through the old art work and go why!
Bryan: Which I hope means I’m getting a little better so hopefully.
Bryan: This is the new, the new species of flying lemurs so…I always wanted to do the ring tailed lemur and they have this funny patch in their fur which always looked like a taupe to me, that when I was designing Momo, I thought was kind of goofy but this time around I was like, I love it. So we honestly don’t see too much of these guys in this first twelve but we think they’re going to have a bigger part in the second half so.
Bryan: So there’s the creepy little taupe.
Bryan: So Kataang won.
Michael: So if there was any confusion, Korra is Aang’s reincarnation which is different to being their daughter. She’s not related to them in that way so. But Aang and Katara did have three kids, the youngest of which was an airbender named Tenzin.
Bryan: Once again, Ryu was just like, here you go.
Joaquim: Crazy concepts.
Michael: So we knew, as Bryan said Korra has learned water, fire and earth and is yet to be able to use airbending at all, so in this series one of her missions is to train with Tenzin and study airbending with him in the Republic City. We created a little, kind of sanctuary off in the bay of Republic City which is called Air Temple Island which is where Tenzin and his family live. There was a shot of that in the trailer.
Bryan: One of Ryu’s early concepts so crazy colours obviously.
Joaquim: Yeah, if you let Ryu colour, it’s going to be some crazy trip.
Bryan: No offence Ryu.
Michael: I think Ryu’s favourite character is Meelo who is the little boy.
Bryan: There was a lot of speculation when we did the signing last year, Ryu was drawing Meelo on the posters and everyone was “who is this meelo!?”.
Bryan: So I was trying to reign in the colours.
Joaquim: But this was really, this ended up becoming the template for Tenzin as you’ll see moving forward. It was, I remember when you did the sketch, this was sort of, we just kinda, just kinda clicked at this point.
Bryan: These guys draw all digitally. Since the last series ended, they went to work on other projects and came back, all on the Cintiq so I was trying, that was one of the things, just trying to draw like them anyways is hard but then trying to do it digitally so.
Bryan: So there’s Meelo. The inspiration for Meelo is my good friend and former professor Chris. He has this crazy little son who when Mike and I visited him in Amsterdamn was just crawling all over him and like aarrrgghh. We were like, man we gotta make that kid a character.
Michael: So Tenzin is sort of like, he’s a very serious kind of guy but when his kids get all crazy on him, he can be very funny. He’s always trying to be the zen master but he isn’t so good at it sometimes especially when he loses his patience with the kids and stuff so he’s been a really fun character to work on.
Bryan: This one was kind of a collaboration between Ryu and myself which was fun. So that’s really, it’s really different characters and different pairings and sometimes one of us will just get it right off the bat. Mostly Ryu [inaudible].
Joaquim: And this is Pema, Tenzin’s wife and she’s currently pregnant. And she’s sort of, given birth to three airbenders so far and they’re all driving her a little crazy.
Michael: And she herself is not a bender.
Joaquim: That’s crazy Meelo.
Bryan: Yeah, Ryu right off the bat, he got these kids right away.
Joaquim: Any ideas?
Ryu: No idea.
Bryan: That’s Jinora. She’s kind of the book worm leader, she’s the oldest.
Joaquim: And there’s her colour model.
Bryan: They’re in training.
Joaquim: They’re all in training.
Bryan: So that’s Ikki.
Michael: She talks a mile a minute and is super funny and crazy.
Joaquim: So there’s Ryu’s beautiful expressions again. Just sort of figuring out the volumes of the head. One thing that always amazes me that Ryu does, it’s become a term we use all the time in our productions is called far eye. It’s something that I have huge trouble with but it’s when you can just see the eyelash when the head is turned ¾ enough away from the view of the camera. You can see on Ikki there, you can just see her eye lash. It amazes me that he knows to draw the eyelash there because I never do it.
Joaquim: So that’s Meelo.
Michael: Ryu kept doing..
Bryan: We kept wanting him to be a really cute kid and Ryu’s like no, he’s ugly.
Joaquim: Strangely though, the more ugly he was the cuter he became.
Joaquim: There’s everybody.
Michael: There’s our main crew right there.
Joaquim: That’s me in Ryu’s eyes as a silver back gorilla. Usually I’m not clean shaven.
Joaquim: And this is, whenever we’re behind on a deadline. Mike’s pointing a gun, and Bryan is plotting our demise.
Bryan: See how evil he draws me.
Bryan: So this is the revolution that you might have read about.
Bryan: This is an early concept I did of the revolutionary leader. This creepy guy Oman is masked.
Bryan: So Joaquim and I paired up on this one and he sort of did the whole costume and body and I worked on the mask with him.
Joaquim: This is Bryan taking what I had done previously, and really refining it, and making it uber creepy and dark and super sinister.
Bryan: Tried to bring it a little more into like, the slightly steam punk, kinda 1920’s vibe. Motorcycle gear, you know.
Bryan: And this was the final model sheet that we, Joaquim and I did together.
Bryan: There he is coloured.
Joaquim: There he is.
Bryan: Very creepy.
Joaquim: So this is a very bad drawing of what was initially meant to be the concept for his henchmen, the Chi Blockers.
Bryan: So you know, like…
Audience: Ty Lee!
Michael: Ty Lee! So that discipline of blocking a persons chi paths to make them stop bending, kind of spread.
Bryan: Well I mean, we had this idea that it’s pretty ancient. It’s kind of like this ancient order that’s always been cloaked, you know, and now there’s this group of anti-benders who are using it to combat the benders of Republic City .
Joaquim: So this was Ryu, sort of refining more of a ninja take on it. Just trying to, just kickin’ around ideas so they’re all really loose, gestural.
Joaquim: It’s getting a little closer. Playing with some crazy shapes for masks. They’re really cool looking but I think we were going for something a little more simple, a little more easy to animate.
Joaquim: This was pretty early on too.
Bryan: Yeah.
Bryan: There’s so much steam punk mask type stuff, specially in video games, so yeah, we tried to do a slightly more steam punk twist on it.
Joaquim: So the goggles.
Bryan: Joaquim had this cool take on it, bringing the mouth piece, instead of down here like you see on most video games, more of kind of like a top knot, like you might see on ancient Chinese costumes.
Joaquim: So these are the chi blockers.
Bryan: Yeah this was just a big collaboration between Ryu and Joaquim.
Michael: So Toph, as you know, was a metal bender. She kind of like, travelled the world, started teaching people, earth benders, how to harness this ability. It’s still kind of a rare thing. Not every earth bender does metal bending but, we have these kind of, it’s the elites, kind of swat team of Republic City.
Joaquim: This was early, very early and very different from what it became and again, just getting those ideas out.
Bryan: Yeah, I was looking at a lot police uniforms from New York and stuff, like in the 20’s and early part of the 20th century.
Bryan: Tried to get the silhouette, but like mix it with samurai armour.
Joaquim: A really cool concept that Bryan had come up with is they have these spools on their back, that, you know, can release and retract these metal cables so they can use to tie up the criminals they’re going after.
Bryan: Kind of zip around.
Joaquim: Zip around the whole city with them. Like the Dai Li.
Bryan: Yeah, it was kind of Dai Li-ish thing.
Michael: So Tophs, this is Toph’s daughter. She’s Chief of Police of Republic City, in charge of all those metal benders.
Bryan: I don’t know what you’re yelling but we gotta keep moving.
Bryan: Ok so, very early on the network was just like yeah, do whatever you want, and we were like alright, then they were like, what are you guys doing, so we had to do some concept sketches to show.
Bryan: So there’s this whole thing that we’re really excited, specially Joaquim and I being huge mixed martial arts fans, we’re really excited about this concept of Pro Bending, and you saw little clips of it in the trailer.
Bryan: It’s like teams of three benders, one of each discipline, you’ll see some other stuff.
Joaquim: But these were all early concept illustrations to get everybody excited about it internally at Nickelodeon.
Bryan: So this is Korra taking on some gangsters.
Bryan: I kind of refined that earlier concept a little bit, half way through the design stage.
Joaquim: That was a rough for their training, their pro bending techniques.
Joaquim: And the coloured up version. You can see Bolin getting yelled at by his instructor, trying to hold the rock.
Bryan: Theres a tiny little Pabu on top of the rock.
Bryan: And I had done this concept in the middle of the night, and Ryu was like, I loved it, so he completely destroyed my drawing and made it way better. And so I cleaned that up. So this is Korra verses some metal bender cops.
Bryan: Ryu did this awesome Korra verses Chi Blockers.
Joaquim: This is the pro bending arena. Again, just a rough and all coloured up.
Joaquim: You know, the entire Republic City comes to watch the elements battle each other.
Bryan: Ryu did this cool design of Team Avatar as this, this concept of them as this Pro bending team.
Joaquim: And it’s cool. You can see the progression of the character designs through, this was during the early development stages.
Bryan: Joaquim did this awesome one. What game play might be like. I had to actually had to sit down and write all the rules. It was pretty crazy.
Joaquim: He made a little virtual, sort of map of the ring, and he was just moving these little virtual characters around. It was like a little video game.
Bryan: It was like an hour long thing explaining to the animators how it worked.
Bryan: This was our poster we did last year. Fred Stewert, one of our two amazing background painters, [name] being the other one. We just found these young artists right out of school. We picked someone who had a really cool concept style and said your style is the style of the show, so we just ran with it.
Bryan: I took a drawing of Joaquim’s story board and cleaned it up for that Wall Street Journal piece. So this is the rough.
Joaquim: That’s the rough..
Bryan: And then if you guys got the t-shirt.
Joaquim: This was a last minute, sort of, call to get that one done. But if was fun.
Bryan: Joaquim did that for you guys
Bryan: And we are really excited to introduce, if you were one of the 50 people lucky enough to get this. We thought a really cool way to introduce someones who’s coming on for the second season, Josh Middleton, if you know comics you know Josh Middleton.
Audience member: Looney Toons!
Bryan: Yeah! Looney Toons! So I thought yeah, with the three of us, you know, cause man, carrying all the art direction burden by myself for the first series was just really taxing, so I thought if I share it with these guys and it’d be fine. The problem is we raised the bar really high so we’re still dying. So we thought we need someone, we need someone to come in for the second season so, I’ve been a fan of Josh’s work for years and luckily enough Joaquim knew him and he’s coming to work with us.so I can not wait to turn it over to him. So he did this piece for you guys.. Really beautiful.
Joaquim: Just speaks for itself.
Bryan: And then another, another awesome person that’s coming onto the second seasons who’s and Avatar alum Lauren McGoumy [Check name]. She’s just amazing, she’s right there! [audience cheers] We’re really lucky to have someone so awesome and we’re so excited to add that to the team and as cool as this first 12 are going to be, the next 14 will blow those away.
Joaquim: And let me just, I’ve got to officially say that I think we officially have the most kick butt animation crew. The top.
Bryan: And this is the poster that we signed. Ryu did this concept and sorry I couldn’t fit Tenzin and Bei Fong on there, in the clean up. But he cleaned it up then I coloured it so that was the poster for you guys.
Bryan: So we’ve got a few more minutes left, and we are going to show you an awesome clip that Noah and [inaudible] edited. He’s our new martial arts videographer coordinator. Working with Kisu again, Sifu Kisu, bringing back the authentic traditional Chinese martial arts, you know, all the awesome classic styles that we love to see in Avatar. And then in every regard as we started to expand the world and the art work and you know, with the new story and the new concept, we wanted to bring in some mixed martial arts elements. Joaquim, luckily enough, Joaquim and I are friends with Mac Danzig, an awesome professional fighter from UFC who came in and did reference with us with one of his training partners Jeremy Umphries. And then some other people on crew knew these amazing, if you’ve ever heard of tricking, it’s this crazy, it’s like stunts, parkour and stunts, a bit flashy, mixed with kind of martial arts. So these guys, don’t try this at home, it’s not that easy so. You’re going to see the kind of cool, where we’re taking the style and yeah, here we go. Please roll the martial arts video.
Martial Arts Reference Video.
Michael: And of course Avatar is not the Avatar without the amazing sound of music by the Track Team. We started the first episode so I’m going to turn it over to them to describe about the new sound and then what they’re working on.
Ben: First of, I just wanted to say wow. I’m incredibly humbled to be on the stage with all of you guys. I don’t feel like I deserve it so thank you. .
Jeremy: You know, Mike said a while back, I mean, we’re just starting so it’s really early, so don’t hold anything against us. We’re leaning on some basic concepts. Bryan came to us with this really cool idea of, of course in true Bryan Koiniztko fashion it was really, really difficult. He said, what would it sound like if in the 20’s, the Chinese had invented Jazz, something to that effect. So at this point, we’re basically going to have to invent a style that is basically if the Chinese were inventing jazz, New Orleans jazz in China in the 20’s. That’s the first part of the musical recipe. The next part is the more traditional elements where we’re going to explore those a little more deeply.in this series, which is really exciting. We found an incredible musician, this Chinese musician who plays like 30 Chinese instruments beautifully. Wind instruments, percussion, and string instruments, all this stuff. So we’re getting pretty into that stuff as well. And then there’s going to be a western element, string cortet [look up word], probably not as grandiose orchestral as the first one but that’s what we said the first time around so who knows if we’re going to be able to stick to that but that’s the idea.
Bryan: We’re going to save it for you know, special…
Jemery: Right, It’ll be special moments so it’ll be a little bit more dynamic That said, so far I think we’re starting to sound pretty cool. We’re just really excited to approach it from a little more of a mature angle. Not like the music wasn’t, I don’t think children’s music necessarily, stylistically there’s nothing wrong with that but the music is definitely, you know, it’s own thing in The Last Airbender. So we’re going to have respect for that early stuff and we’re going to treat is as musical history, it’s sort of source material that we can explore as well. So we have a lot of elements to work with. We’re definitely, you know, if we’re going to be out of ideas that’ll be our fault
Bryan: Plus, it’s been a few years since we wrapped in 2008 and Ben and Jeremy have worked on a bunch of stuff. They were amazing then, but their skills have just grown and I can’t wait to hear what the sound design, you know, is going to be incredible. Even their company is growing, they used to do everything themselves and they’re in such demand, doing music for Kung Fu Panda, the TV series on Nickelodeon and yeah. So any thoughts on the sound design?
Ben: I was just going to say, you know, seeing these visuals and the story, it’s definitely, it’s been stepped up, even for Avatar. It’s more sophisticated, it’s a little bit more adult, there’s more details so we’re going to have to step it up as well.
Bryan: And guys we really need your continued help, trying to get that sound track released. So you should tell Nickelodeon that you’d buy the dang thing if we put it out. We all obviously want it to be released and have been fighting for it for years but sometimes it’s hard to get the big company to do what you want. We’re going to keep fighting, it’ll happen.
Michael: Well thank you guys so much for coming out and Bryan and I just wanted to thank these guys, all the crew at Nickelodeon. They’ve been awesome. All the crew at Studio Mire overseas working crazy, crazy, trying to animate this thing that we’ve given them.
Bryan: Yeah every body in Burbank we work with, An amazing team, Rolin, Megan, Braddon, Brown, Johnson everyones been…
Michael: Everyones been an amazing support and creative freedom we have there so we really treasure that and are thankful for it.
Bryan: And we honestly don’t know, we don’t have an air date yet, so we don’t know…it is going to happen!
Michael: We just don’t know when.
Bryan: We’ve heard a lot of crazy conspiracy theories. There’s no conspiracy. There’s just a lot of stuff that needs to premire and a lot of shows. It’s kind of like being on a tarmac. The captains like, the planes ok, there’s nothing wrong with it, we just gotta wait in line. So appreciate your continued patience and trust us that it’ll all be worth it.
Roland: Before we show the trailer again, I just wanted to say that these guys have two goals set for Legend of Korra. One is to, which is actually an achievement in on itself, is to do something even better then Avatar The Last Airbender. And the second goal, and this was equally as important, was to make sure that they didn’t do anything in a single frame of this new show that would disappoint anyone in this room because you guys are the most important. And I can tell you, I’m not just a network executive, I’m a fan and believe me, when you see what these guys have come up with. I can’t wait myself!
Bryan: Thanks again, and we’ll see you next year I’m sure and please roll the trailer.
Roland: Let’s hear it for Team Avatar.
Trailer again.
Credits:
Image credits to SirRogueSirRogue, thegadgetfish, and Kate.
Youtube Legend of Korra panel upload credit to TheYumChucks.
Youtube The Character of Music panel upload credit to TheYumChucks.
Youtube HD Trailer upload credit to MundoAvatarYT.
Youtube Martial Arts Clip upload credit to moonlitshadow76.
HD trailer upload credit to unknown.
Megavideo full panel credit to instrumentalsftw. Uploaded by Kate.
Transcript credit to Kate.
Roland Poindexter: …Last year and didn’t appear on a panel like comic con so I didn’t get a chance to do this. Now I’ve worked up the energy to do it since it’s been two years now so I’m all ready and I’ll start out with my traditional welcome. Good afternoon Comic Con San Diego 2011! My name is LOOK UP NAME and I’m senior vice president current animation for Nickelodeon and you know actually I really want to start this out by thanking you. Nickelodeon and this is very important, Nickelodeon has enjoyed a lot of success obviously over the years and certainly over the last couple of years and that is all because of you the great fans of all the things that we do including Spongebob and Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy and Chum Chum. even a little show called iCarly and so I really want to thank you guys for all the support you’ve given the network and the company through the years and especially for your undying, unceasing, incredible love for Avatar; The Last Airbender. Because of all the phone calls, because of all the emails, because of the non stop demands, we sat down with Mike and Bryan and we said dudes, you guys gotta do something else. They said ok, we can put a little something together and you know, they have and I’m really excited for them to share it with you today and again thank you all for attending today and you know what that’s enough of the thank you, lets get on to the good part. And you know, before we start, you know, we’re just going to give you as much as we possibly can today.
One of the great things about Avatar and Legend of Korra and just this whole experience here at Comic Con is all of the costumes that we see, both at the panel and [cheering]. We know that you guys have been dying to see what Korra looks like and we have a couple of pieces of artwork online but we actually brought our own live Korra. So next year, if anybody wants to put together their own korra suit, you’ve got a high bar. So with that, without further delay, let me bring up the executive producer of The Last Airbender; The Legend of Korra Bryan Konietzko. I am also pleased to bring up the other executive producer and creator of Avatar The Last Airbender and The Last Airbender; Legend of Korra, Michael Dante DiMartino. One of my favourite people to have worked with on this and other shows is here today as well and he’s an incredible talent. He’s the co-executive producer of Legend of Korra, Joaquim Dos Santos. And I think that this team here would be the first ones to tell you that our supervising director is an incredible, INCREDIBLE talent. You’re going to get a chance to hear from him today and believe me, you’re going to get a chance to marvel at his work in this incredible series, Mr. Ryu, the supervising director. And I don’t know if you guys have ever done this but sometimes you can just, you can almost, sort of…even though these guys write great dialogue and they produce an amazing picture, you can kind of close your eyes and just listen to the music of Avatar. It gives me goosebumps. We have the incredible duo that produce all of the music and are the sound designers for the entire series, The Track Team, Ben Whynn and Jeremy Zukerman. I’m going to shut up now and let the guys take it away.
Michael Dante DiMartino: Thank you, everyone for coming and supporting us and supporting this new series that you haven’t even seen yet so that’s [inaudible]. It’s very cool to be here again.
Audience Member: YOU GUYS RULE!!
Bryan Konietzko: You guys rule, seriously. You’re the best fans and we did a panel, the track team invited us to a panel on Thursday and afterwards one of the producers of the other shows was like, your fans are really passionate. We later found out that most of the room was, you know, full of Avatar fans. So thanks for coming out.
Mike: So we’re going to get started right away. We’re gonna, we have a trailer to show you. We know you’re very excited about the trailer so we’re going to show it first, then we’re going to talk about the show a little bit, then at the very end we’ll show it again because I know there’s going to be screaming so if you miss something the first time just hold tight til the end because we’ll show it again.
Bryan: And we did this Studio Mire [note: I couldn’t hear it so someone correct me], it’s a new studio but it’s comprised of a lot of the great animators we’ve worked with since the pilot, so you’ll recognise some of the style, but you know, with [inaudible], Joaquim, Ryu, really high up in the creative team, I think you’ll see an increase in the sophistication of everything. It’s just been a dream working with these guys and all our friends in Korea and so we’re really excited to show this too you. Play the tape.
Trailer.
Bryan: I think you’ll guys hear that part the second time round. Over the years we’ve gotten a lot of fan mail which is always great and a lot of fun to read but uh sometimes, you know, it’s pretty bossy, someone telling us what to do, and I have to admit that we’ve been working so hard, we’re all really busy, and I’ve uh stopped opening the fanmail because like, two out of three letters, was like WE DON’T WANT KORRA, stop making this series! So we appreciate the enthusiasm for our work but I just had to stop opening the mail. So don’t send those kind of letters. But anyways, I just brought it up because it’s really nice to hear your reaction to the show we’ve been slaving over.
Mike: We’re really excited to be back, developing this world again, in a whole new way. For Bryan and I the exciting part is to be in this world and be able to expand it, as much as we love the old characters, we love Aang, we love Katara and they’re awesome, you know creatively it’s just like so inspiring to like dive back into this world in a new location, new time period, it’s 70 years later, a lot of new themes dealing with korra, dealing with air bending, spirituality and such. It’s really exciting to explore that and think you guys will dig it.
Bryan: When we put together The Art of Avatar book, you know, as satisfying as that was and really nice to tell the story in a personal way and look at all the art we’ve created. You know, the artist in me just couldn’t help as I went through this stuff going, we could do this better now, you know, we could make all this stuff better so doing a whole new kind of fresh take in the Avatar world gives us a chance to improve all the art direction in the animation and everything so that’s been the big challenge and that’s why we brought these guys on as the co-exect and supervising director. Man, Mike and I have just been trying to keep up with them. They are, it’s just, first few moments were just humiliating. Trying to like, design with these guys ‘cause Joaquim and Ryu were there from the ground up, Rolin [note: need a correction on this name] and Megan, you know, brought us in, and said they wanted a new series, and gave us pretty much free run with what we wanted to do creatively and the most important thing was like, we gotta get Joaquim and Ryu, or else we can’t do this. So these guys sacrificed a lot to come work with us, and we really appreciate it so.
Joaquim Dos Santos: It was totally our honour to be asked in the first place to come onto the show and Bryan is lying when he says he’s trying to keep up with us. The idea and I think the cool thing about this production that makes it unique from other shows I’ve been a part of, really a lot of the other shows that are out is that, you know, the top leads are all artists so the art sort of, the integrity is maintained from the top all the way through the production cycle. And it’s a really unique position for us to be in and I think it’ll show, you know, in the series when it premieres but, you know, more importantly then that it sort of, permeates the industry and hopefully makes everybody and every show in the industry better for it and I think that something the original series did when I went onto it, I was a fan, and I went to you guys because I loved the way the show looked so hopefully we’re continuing that tradition. Should we?
Bryan: Yeah we can…shall we jump into the art? Cool. We’re going to do the laptop. So one thing we wanted to do when we were, you know, revamping the world was, bring a little more sophisticated style to the character design. Change the proportions a bit, then Joaquim and Ryu are both amazing designers so from the get go Mike and I were like, they want to do a new series ehh, then we were like oh man, we started having ideas, you know, and the first thing, and we said this in a few interviews, we really wanted Korra to be different to Aang, so, let’s [inaudible] the next avatar so she’s just totally different to Aang, other than being female, just different in her personality and everything so that’s also really refreshing for Mike and I. We’d be writing a scene, and just stop and pinch ourselves and say, Aang would never have said this, Aang never would have done this, and that’s fun. So the other thing that we wanted, I didn’t want to design, I didn’t want to do a sketch and send it over to Joaquim and have them interpret it. We just told them on the phone our idea for the character and I think, 10 minutes later he sent us the first image so I wanted Joaquim and Ryu to really be in on the ground up, and you’ll see, mostly their work up here. So, take it away.
Joaquim: Alright, and before we go on, you’re going to notice that a lot of the set up here is me doing a little kind of, goofy sketch and Ryu taking that sketch and making it one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. So that’s sort of the theme for this presentation. So while we’re in our meetings, Ryu tends to do a lot of caricatures, and the first one that he did when we first started this was setting up this moment right here.
Joaquim: And yeah, I think you got it pretty well buddy.
Bryan: Ryu draws me like, really evil. Ryeehh!
Joaquim: And that’s, that’s the crew. The art crew. I look like an angry Hank Hill or something.
Joaquim: That was my first initial concept of Korra. Bryan said she’s gotta be tough, she’s from the Water Tribe. As you can see her hair is nothing like it is but the bones of the characters are there. The main themes for the character are there.
Bryan: And I think we talked about, we kinda wanted her to look like a snowboarder, you know, like a cool tomboy, tough, athletic.
Joaquim: The idea was to break the conventions of what, you know, female super heros, she’s tough, she’s rugged.
Joaquim: That was a second concept. Just goofin’ round, just playing with ideas, trying to get the shapes down, the ideas across, and the attitude as well.
Joaquim: And that was I think that was the first basic turn that we did. You’ll see her facial style is nothing like the Avatar universe you’ve come to know and I think initially we were playing with going a little more broad in terms of style. But Ryu being, you know, a super star animator and director from Korea, made sure to let us know, you know, not every character can be completely unique looking, there needs to be like a through line, that every artists, because there’s so many, you know, animators in Korea, so every artist could understand and draw the character a bit more easily. So she looks different here but again, the idea is there.
Joaquim: That’s a close up on her attitude.
Bryan: That was the one that we, even though we hadn’t necessarily pinned down the style and all the details, we were like, that’s her. That’s definitely her spirit. That’s her attitude.
Joaquim: That was Ryu’s first turn. You can see she already started taking a lot closer, you know, a turn, a lot closer to the model you know now as Korra that’s been released in the press art and stuff. Did you have an ideas when you were…?
Ki-Hyun Ryu: Frankly, I had no idea. We were so much busy so the time, we were crazy.
Joaquim: It was a crazy time.
Ryu: I don’t even remember.
Joaquim: Ryu draws better than all of us in his sleep so have this stuff he won’t remember.
Joaquim: I think this was kind of, this was you taking Ryu’s design?
Bryan: I had done, underneath you can kind of see a transparent, concept thing…because Korra already water, fire, and earth bends and Ryu was inspired by that drawing to do this overlay which really helped us get closer to the final model. These are Ryu’s drawings.
Joaquim: Seven heads high. This is the basic proportion. Again I think we ended up, kinda making her a bit thicker, a bit more brawny.
Bryan: In the old series, the heads were. I mean when I go back and look, they’re so big. They’re like lollipop heads. I have a small head so I relate to these characters.
Joaquim: But the characters are, I mean, you know, classically the characters were a lot younger, they were aged down. She’s 16?
Bryan: 17. Most of our main characters are older than our other crew.
Joaquim: So, some expressions. Again, Ryu just going crazy and inspiring all of us.
Joaquim: That’s the official turn. And this was, really a comunation of all of us, throwing our art into the pot, then Bryan taking it all and bringing it all together for this model. So it’s got elements from my drawings, from Ryu’s drawings and Bryans drawings.
Bryan: I just glued together.
Joaquim: He’s lying, total liar. But again, what I think that sort of lends itself to is the idea that on this production, even the creative leads at the top were all throwing in artistically, which is a great help, a benefit to the entire production.
Joaquim: There she is all coloured up.
Joaquim: Close up. She’s beautiful.
Bryan: This is the one we went with.
Joaquim: I love her bellybutton. That’s Ryu. This is what Ryu does all day long. He’s crazy.
Joaquim: You got something to say about this?
Michael: All Avatars need a team, of course. So when we were developing Korra, and thinking about who was , you know, who were her friends gonna be, we kinda of wanted to encapsulate that it’s taking place 70 years after the original series, it’s in a very much more modern metropolis sort of city. The world is a little different place. Like now there’s benders living together in a city with non benders. It’s kind of a much more like, New York or…it’s a melting pot of all different cultures and stuff. So there’s still the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation but there’s still one place called The United Republic where everyone comes together. It’s a place that Aang and Zuko founded back in the day after the war. It’s, that’s nice.
Bryan: So we came up with these brothers and, really early on we said they’re brothers, and they’re from a multicultural family if you will. So one of them is a fire bender, one is an earth bender. Answers a lot of questions we got through the years about how that works. So you know, here we have the best designers, you know, we’re like, there’s these cool brothers, and he’s like, ok we got it.
Joaquim: And this was his first drawing.
Michael: And we were like, Ryu, what does this mean? What is this character?
Joaquim: This guy goes to clown school.
Ryu: I think it looks cool.
Bryan: We were like, he was like, what’s wrong? I loved it. Not that it isn’t a beautiful drawing but…
Michael: Ryu can draw the craziest character and it looks amazing but it’s not exactly the type character we were going for when we were thinking of Bolin.
Joaquim: So this was Ryu’s, it looks like, to us, it was fantastic but very Final Fantasy maybe?
Bryan: A little over the top. A little like a magician or something.
Joaquim: So this was my first concept that sort of brought them into the era that the story was taking place in. Again, my style is not good…
Bryan: Stoppp.
Joaquim: But the idea is there.
Joaquim: That was another…
Bryan: Yeah, it’s kind of a 1920’s, like jazz age, Shanghai, Manhattan, thing so Joaquim was doing these really cool, like, Dickons, you know, Old World concepts and stuff so, with the clothing and so, with that information, Ryu…
Joaquim: He took it and started killing on it.
Bryan: Reining it in.
Joaquim: This is a little closer. I love the pony tail that just comes out of no where.
Bryan: A little spig of hair.
Joaquim: Boom.
Bryan: It gets a bit crazy.
Bryan: And crazier. We’re like Ryu, it’s like the 20’s, come on, you know, this isn’t Twilight. This is research and development.
Bryan: So this is the one we liked.
Joaquim: That’s the one we went with.
Bryan: And if you’re wondering, we did name him after Mako, the great actor.
Joaquim: Mako’s basic proportions. He’s a beautiful man.
Bryan: Very tall.
Joaquim: This is colour for him. I think one thing that was really cool, and this was a direct direction, was that the colour palette for the characters living in the city reflected again, that era, that sort of, industrial revolution type era. So the colours are more subdued.
Bryan: Oh, and just to be clear, I was all the art director on the first series but this time around, Ryu, Joaquim and I shared that responsibility so just a lot of dividing and conquering. I tended to do, and still do more of the colour, and these guys tended to do more of the design but we all, you know, pitch in a little [inaudible] it’s just very collaborative.
Joaquim: It’s good.
Joaquim: So this is his brother Bolin.
Bryan: Ryu was like, I get it now.
Michael: So where is Mako is kind of the brooding, a little bit Zukoish maybe.
Bryan: Not quite Zuko, he’s less brooding.
Michael: He’s a little lighter. Bolin is his younger, goofier brother. And he’s 19.
Bryan: He’s kind of, you know, if you’ve heard the commentary and stuff, you know our original concept for Toph was a male character who was kind of big, not the sharpest tool in the shed and Andy had the awesome idea to make Toph a smaller girl, which was great, became one of my favourite characters. That said, we still had a lot of ideas for this guy so he found a place in this series.
Joaquim: How did you come up with this character?
Bryan: His hair reminds me of a duck.
Ryu: I told you, I can’t remember that.
Bryan: He wanted Mako’s hair to go forward, and Bolins to go back.
Bryan: So he says, guys I get the feeling of drawing Bolin, so he’s starting to get the character done.
Joaquim: It’s almost there.
Joaquim: So there’s Bolin. He could still be sorta cool.
Bryan: Yeah he’s cool.
Bryan: Ryu’s expression sheets are amazing, so alive.
Michael: My favourite, you probably saw it. He’s reading a book called How to be a Man.
Bryan: With Aang on the cover.
Joaquim: So there he is in all his glory.
Bryan: I’m so happy to work on a show with spats.
Joaquim: And there they are all together.
Bryan: So I can not keep up with Joaquim and Ryu on the character design but I can kinda draw animals so…
Joaquim: He can definitely draw animals.
Bryan: So if you’ve read the Art of Avatar book you’ll know that one of the three original characters in the first concept was this bipedal polar bear dog character and so, kind of like Bolin, we found a place for that character in this series. So as you saw in the trailer, this is Naga, you know, Korra’s best friend and it’s a girl, just for reference.
Bryan: It’s also inspired by the dogs that we each have.
Michael: In some poses, especially when Bryan draws it, it look exactly like our dogs.
Joaquim: So it’s like polar bear in the front, lab in the back, golden retriever in the back.
Bryan: And it’s got the dog ears.
Bryan: Naga’s awesome. She kicks a lot of butt.
Joaquim: That one especially looks like your dogs.
Bryan: Yeah that looks like our dogs.
Bryan: So another character that we’ve been kickin’ around for some stuff finally found a home in this series and this is Pavo and he’s a red panda and a black footed ferret. This is just an early, early concept for the initial pitch and then some more development.
Bryan: And he’s Bolins little buddy. And he’s called a fire ferret which is, one of the names for a red panda is a fire fox so it’s kind of a little play on that.
Bryan: And as you saw in the trailer, there’s a slightly different species of flying bison, you know, just some subtle differences in the horns and in the pattern. The idea is that Aang found a kind of herd of these things that survived after the war.
Bryan: And, the colour is a bit different, it was kind of a chance for me to upgrade some things, kind of update the model and stuff.
Joaquim: Anatomically it’s much more sort of…
Bryan: Yeah, when I look at the old models, I just cringe.
Joaquim: I would hear him in his office as he was flipping through the old art work and go why!
Bryan: Which I hope means I’m getting a little better so hopefully.
Bryan: This is the new, the new species of flying lemurs so…I always wanted to do the ring tailed lemur and they have this funny patch in their fur which always looked like a taupe to me, that when I was designing Momo, I thought was kind of goofy but this time around I was like, I love it. So we honestly don’t see too much of these guys in this first twelve but we think they’re going to have a bigger part in the second half so.
Bryan: So there’s the creepy little taupe.
Bryan: So Kataang won.
Michael: So if there was any confusion, Korra is Aang’s reincarnation which is different to being their daughter. She’s not related to them in that way so. But Aang and Katara did have three kids, the youngest of which was an airbender named Tenzin.
Bryan: Once again, Ryu was just like, here you go.
Joaquim: Crazy concepts.
Michael: So we knew, as Bryan said Korra has learned water, fire and earth and is yet to be able to use airbending at all, so in this series one of her missions is to train with Tenzin and study airbending with him in the Republic City. We created a little, kind of sanctuary off in the bay of Republic City which is called Air Temple Island which is where Tenzin and his family live. There was a shot of that in the trailer.
Bryan: One of Ryu’s early concepts so crazy colours obviously.
Joaquim: Yeah, if you let Ryu colour, it’s going to be some crazy trip.
Bryan: No offence Ryu.
Michael: I think Ryu’s favourite character is Meelo who is the little boy.
Bryan: There was a lot of speculation when we did the signing last year, Ryu was drawing Meelo on the posters and everyone was “who is this meelo!?”.
Bryan: So I was trying to reign in the colours.
Joaquim: But this was really, this ended up becoming the template for Tenzin as you’ll see moving forward. It was, I remember when you did the sketch, this was sort of, we just kinda, just kinda clicked at this point.
Bryan: These guys draw all digitally. Since the last series ended, they went to work on other projects and came back, all on the Cintiq so I was trying, that was one of the things, just trying to draw like them anyways is hard but then trying to do it digitally so.
Bryan: So there’s Meelo. The inspiration for Meelo is my good friend and former professor Chris. He has this crazy little son who when Mike and I visited him in Amsterdamn was just crawling all over him and like aarrrgghh. We were like, man we gotta make that kid a character.
Michael: So Tenzin is sort of like, he’s a very serious kind of guy but when his kids get all crazy on him, he can be very funny. He’s always trying to be the zen master but he isn’t so good at it sometimes especially when he loses his patience with the kids and stuff so he’s been a really fun character to work on.
Bryan: This one was kind of a collaboration between Ryu and myself which was fun. So that’s really, it’s really different characters and different pairings and sometimes one of us will just get it right off the bat. Mostly Ryu [inaudible].
Joaquim: And this is Pema, Tenzin’s wife and she’s currently pregnant. And she’s sort of, given birth to three airbenders so far and they’re all driving her a little crazy.
Michael: And she herself is not a bender.
Joaquim: That’s crazy Meelo.
Bryan: Yeah, Ryu right off the bat, he got these kids right away.
Joaquim: Any ideas?
Ryu: No idea.
Bryan: That’s Jinora. She’s kind of the book worm leader, she’s the oldest.
Joaquim: And there’s her colour model.
Bryan: They’re in training.
Joaquim: They’re all in training.
Bryan: So that’s Ikki.
Michael: She talks a mile a minute and is super funny and crazy.
Joaquim: So there’s Ryu’s beautiful expressions again. Just sort of figuring out the volumes of the head. One thing that always amazes me that Ryu does, it’s become a term we use all the time in our productions is called far eye. It’s something that I have huge trouble with but it’s when you can just see the eyelash when the head is turned ¾ enough away from the view of the camera. You can see on Ikki there, you can just see her eye lash. It amazes me that he knows to draw the eyelash there because I never do it.
Joaquim: So that’s Meelo.
Michael: Ryu kept doing..
Bryan: We kept wanting him to be a really cute kid and Ryu’s like no, he’s ugly.
Joaquim: Strangely though, the more ugly he was the cuter he became.
Joaquim: There’s everybody.
Michael: There’s our main crew right there.
Joaquim: That’s me in Ryu’s eyes as a silver back gorilla. Usually I’m not clean shaven.
Joaquim: And this is, whenever we’re behind on a deadline. Mike’s pointing a gun, and Bryan is plotting our demise.
Bryan: See how evil he draws me.
Bryan: So this is the revolution that you might have read about.
Bryan: This is an early concept I did of the revolutionary leader. This creepy guy Oman is masked.
Bryan: So Joaquim and I paired up on this one and he sort of did the whole costume and body and I worked on the mask with him.
Joaquim: This is Bryan taking what I had done previously, and really refining it, and making it uber creepy and dark and super sinister.
Bryan: Tried to bring it a little more into like, the slightly steam punk, kinda 1920’s vibe. Motorcycle gear, you know.
Bryan: And this was the final model sheet that we, Joaquim and I did together.
Bryan: There he is coloured.
Joaquim: There he is.
Bryan: Very creepy.
Joaquim: So this is a very bad drawing of what was initially meant to be the concept for his henchmen, the Chi Blockers.
Bryan: So you know, like…
Audience: Ty Lee!
Michael: Ty Lee! So that discipline of blocking a persons chi paths to make them stop bending, kind of spread.
Bryan: Well I mean, we had this idea that it’s pretty ancient. It’s kind of like this ancient order that’s always been cloaked, you know, and now there’s this group of anti-benders who are using it to combat the benders of Republic City .
Joaquim: So this was Ryu, sort of refining more of a ninja take on it. Just trying to, just kickin’ around ideas so they’re all really loose, gestural.
Joaquim: It’s getting a little closer. Playing with some crazy shapes for masks. They’re really cool looking but I think we were going for something a little more simple, a little more easy to animate.
Joaquim: This was pretty early on too.
Bryan: Yeah.
Bryan: There’s so much steam punk mask type stuff, specially in video games, so yeah, we tried to do a slightly more steam punk twist on it.
Joaquim: So the goggles.
Bryan: Joaquim had this cool take on it, bringing the mouth piece, instead of down here like you see on most video games, more of kind of like a top knot, like you might see on ancient Chinese costumes.
Joaquim: So these are the chi blockers.
Bryan: Yeah this was just a big collaboration between Ryu and Joaquim.
Michael: So Toph, as you know, was a metal bender. She kind of like, travelled the world, started teaching people, earth benders, how to harness this ability. It’s still kind of a rare thing. Not every earth bender does metal bending but, we have these kind of, it’s the elites, kind of swat team of Republic City.
Joaquim: This was early, very early and very different from what it became and again, just getting those ideas out.
Bryan: Yeah, I was looking at a lot police uniforms from New York and stuff, like in the 20’s and early part of the 20th century.
Bryan: Tried to get the silhouette, but like mix it with samurai armour.
Joaquim: A really cool concept that Bryan had come up with is they have these spools on their back, that, you know, can release and retract these metal cables so they can use to tie up the criminals they’re going after.
Bryan: Kind of zip around.
Joaquim: Zip around the whole city with them. Like the Dai Li.
Bryan: Yeah, it was kind of Dai Li-ish thing.
Michael: So Tophs, this is Toph’s daughter. She’s Chief of Police of Republic City, in charge of all those metal benders.
Bryan: I don’t know what you’re yelling but we gotta keep moving.
Bryan: Ok so, very early on the network was just like yeah, do whatever you want, and we were like alright, then they were like, what are you guys doing, so we had to do some concept sketches to show.
Bryan: So there’s this whole thing that we’re really excited, specially Joaquim and I being huge mixed martial arts fans, we’re really excited about this concept of Pro Bending, and you saw little clips of it in the trailer.
Bryan: It’s like teams of three benders, one of each discipline, you’ll see some other stuff.
Joaquim: But these were all early concept illustrations to get everybody excited about it internally at Nickelodeon.
Bryan: So this is Korra taking on some gangsters.
Bryan: I kind of refined that earlier concept a little bit, half way through the design stage.
Joaquim: That was a rough for their training, their pro bending techniques.
Joaquim: And the coloured up version. You can see Bolin getting yelled at by his instructor, trying to hold the rock.
Bryan: Theres a tiny little Pabu on top of the rock.
Bryan: And I had done this concept in the middle of the night, and Ryu was like, I loved it, so he completely destroyed my drawing and made it way better. And so I cleaned that up. So this is Korra verses some metal bender cops.
Bryan: Ryu did this awesome Korra verses Chi Blockers.
Joaquim: This is the pro bending arena. Again, just a rough and all coloured up.
Joaquim: You know, the entire Republic City comes to watch the elements battle each other.
Bryan: Ryu did this cool design of Team Avatar as this, this concept of them as this Pro bending team.
Joaquim: And it’s cool. You can see the progression of the character designs through, this was during the early development stages.
Bryan: Joaquim did this awesome one. What game play might be like. I had to actually had to sit down and write all the rules. It was pretty crazy.
Joaquim: He made a little virtual, sort of map of the ring, and he was just moving these little virtual characters around. It was like a little video game.
Bryan: It was like an hour long thing explaining to the animators how it worked.
Bryan: This was our poster we did last year. Fred Stewert, one of our two amazing background painters, [name] being the other one. We just found these young artists right out of school. We picked someone who had a really cool concept style and said your style is the style of the show, so we just ran with it.
Bryan: I took a drawing of Joaquim’s story board and cleaned it up for that Wall Street Journal piece. So this is the rough.
Joaquim: That’s the rough..
Bryan: And then if you guys got the t-shirt.
Joaquim: This was a last minute, sort of, call to get that one done. But if was fun.
Bryan: Joaquim did that for you guys
Bryan: And we are really excited to introduce, if you were one of the 50 people lucky enough to get this. We thought a really cool way to introduce someones who’s coming on for the second season, Josh Middleton, if you know comics you know Josh Middleton.
Audience member: Looney Toons!
Bryan: Yeah! Looney Toons! So I thought yeah, with the three of us, you know, cause man, carrying all the art direction burden by myself for the first series was just really taxing, so I thought if I share it with these guys and it’d be fine. The problem is we raised the bar really high so we’re still dying. So we thought we need someone, we need someone to come in for the second season so, I’ve been a fan of Josh’s work for years and luckily enough Joaquim knew him and he’s coming to work with us.so I can not wait to turn it over to him. So he did this piece for you guys.. Really beautiful.
Joaquim: Just speaks for itself.
Bryan: And then another, another awesome person that’s coming onto the second seasons who’s and Avatar alum Lauren McGoumy [Check name]. She’s just amazing, she’s right there! [audience cheers] We’re really lucky to have someone so awesome and we’re so excited to add that to the team and as cool as this first 12 are going to be, the next 14 will blow those away.
Joaquim: And let me just, I’ve got to officially say that I think we officially have the most kick butt animation crew. The top.
Bryan: And this is the poster that we signed. Ryu did this concept and sorry I couldn’t fit Tenzin and Bei Fong on there, in the clean up. But he cleaned it up then I coloured it so that was the poster for you guys.
Bryan: So we’ve got a few more minutes left, and we are going to show you an awesome clip that Noah and [inaudible] edited. He’s our new martial arts videographer coordinator. Working with Kisu again, Sifu Kisu, bringing back the authentic traditional Chinese martial arts, you know, all the awesome classic styles that we love to see in Avatar. And then in every regard as we started to expand the world and the art work and you know, with the new story and the new concept, we wanted to bring in some mixed martial arts elements. Joaquim, luckily enough, Joaquim and I are friends with Mac Danzig, an awesome professional fighter from UFC who came in and did reference with us with one of his training partners Jeremy Umphries. And then some other people on crew knew these amazing, if you’ve ever heard of tricking, it’s this crazy, it’s like stunts, parkour and stunts, a bit flashy, mixed with kind of martial arts. So these guys, don’t try this at home, it’s not that easy so. You’re going to see the kind of cool, where we’re taking the style and yeah, here we go. Please roll the martial arts video.
Martial Arts Reference Video.
Michael: And of course Avatar is not the Avatar without the amazing sound of music by the Track Team. We started the first episode so I’m going to turn it over to them to describe about the new sound and then what they’re working on.
Ben: First of, I just wanted to say wow. I’m incredibly humbled to be on the stage with all of you guys. I don’t feel like I deserve it so thank you. .
Jeremy: You know, Mike said a while back, I mean, we’re just starting so it’s really early, so don’t hold anything against us. We’re leaning on some basic concepts. Bryan came to us with this really cool idea of, of course in true Bryan Koiniztko fashion it was really, really difficult. He said, what would it sound like if in the 20’s, the Chinese had invented Jazz, something to that effect. So at this point, we’re basically going to have to invent a style that is basically if the Chinese were inventing jazz, New Orleans jazz in China in the 20’s. That’s the first part of the musical recipe. The next part is the more traditional elements where we’re going to explore those a little more deeply.in this series, which is really exciting. We found an incredible musician, this Chinese musician who plays like 30 Chinese instruments beautifully. Wind instruments, percussion, and string instruments, all this stuff. So we’re getting pretty into that stuff as well. And then there’s going to be a western element, string cortet [look up word], probably not as grandiose orchestral as the first one but that’s what we said the first time around so who knows if we’re going to be able to stick to that but that’s the idea.
Bryan: We’re going to save it for you know, special…
Jemery: Right, It’ll be special moments so it’ll be a little bit more dynamic That said, so far I think we’re starting to sound pretty cool. We’re just really excited to approach it from a little more of a mature angle. Not like the music wasn’t, I don’t think children’s music necessarily, stylistically there’s nothing wrong with that but the music is definitely, you know, it’s own thing in The Last Airbender. So we’re going to have respect for that early stuff and we’re going to treat is as musical history, it’s sort of source material that we can explore as well. So we have a lot of elements to work with. We’re definitely, you know, if we’re going to be out of ideas that’ll be our fault
Bryan: Plus, it’s been a few years since we wrapped in 2008 and Ben and Jeremy have worked on a bunch of stuff. They were amazing then, but their skills have just grown and I can’t wait to hear what the sound design, you know, is going to be incredible. Even their company is growing, they used to do everything themselves and they’re in such demand, doing music for Kung Fu Panda, the TV series on Nickelodeon and yeah. So any thoughts on the sound design?
Ben: I was just going to say, you know, seeing these visuals and the story, it’s definitely, it’s been stepped up, even for Avatar. It’s more sophisticated, it’s a little bit more adult, there’s more details so we’re going to have to step it up as well.
Bryan: And guys we really need your continued help, trying to get that sound track released. So you should tell Nickelodeon that you’d buy the dang thing if we put it out. We all obviously want it to be released and have been fighting for it for years but sometimes it’s hard to get the big company to do what you want. We’re going to keep fighting, it’ll happen.
Michael: Well thank you guys so much for coming out and Bryan and I just wanted to thank these guys, all the crew at Nickelodeon. They’ve been awesome. All the crew at Studio Mire overseas working crazy, crazy, trying to animate this thing that we’ve given them.
Bryan: Yeah every body in Burbank we work with, An amazing team, Rolin, Megan, Braddon, Brown, Johnson everyones been…
Michael: Everyones been an amazing support and creative freedom we have there so we really treasure that and are thankful for it.
Bryan: And we honestly don’t know, we don’t have an air date yet, so we don’t know…it is going to happen!
Michael: We just don’t know when.
Bryan: We’ve heard a lot of crazy conspiracy theories. There’s no conspiracy. There’s just a lot of stuff that needs to premire and a lot of shows. It’s kind of like being on a tarmac. The captains like, the planes ok, there’s nothing wrong with it, we just gotta wait in line. So appreciate your continued patience and trust us that it’ll all be worth it.
Roland: Before we show the trailer again, I just wanted to say that these guys have two goals set for Legend of Korra. One is to, which is actually an achievement in on itself, is to do something even better then Avatar The Last Airbender. And the second goal, and this was equally as important, was to make sure that they didn’t do anything in a single frame of this new show that would disappoint anyone in this room because you guys are the most important. And I can tell you, I’m not just a network executive, I’m a fan and believe me, when you see what these guys have come up with. I can’t wait myself!
Bryan: Thanks again, and we’ll see you next year I’m sure and please roll the trailer.
Roland: Let’s hear it for Team Avatar.
Trailer again.
Credits:
Image credits to SirRogueSirRogue, thegadgetfish, and Kate.
Youtube Legend of Korra panel upload credit to TheYumChucks.
Youtube The Character of Music panel upload credit to TheYumChucks.
Youtube HD Trailer upload credit to MundoAvatarYT.
Youtube Martial Arts Clip upload credit to moonlitshadow76.
HD trailer upload credit to unknown.
Megavideo full panel credit to instrumentalsftw. Uploaded by Kate.
Transcript credit to Kate.