The anime-inspired, Nickelodeon-produced series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, debuts Monday, Feb. 21 on the kid cabler. Animation Magazine Online spoke with the show’s co-creators and exec. producers, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko about this new mythical adventure which craftily blends Japanese-style animation and Easten philosophy with western sensibilities.
Avatar: The Last Airbender centers on Aang, a fun-loving 12-year-old who must forego a normal life in order to master his latent powers over the four elements. In the debut episode, Aang the Avatar is discovered in a cavernous iceberg, where he had been trapped for 100 years. Once freed, he befriends his emancipators, Katara and Sokka, and struggles to evade the capture of Prince Zuko, a teenage Firebender who has attacked the Water Tribe in search of him.
Konietzko and DiMartino met several years ago at Rhode Island school of Design. DiMartino, who was a couple years ahead in school, landed a directing job at Film Roman and later got Konietzko hired as a character designer on Family Guy. The duo also worked together on the Fox primetime series Mission Hill and King of the Hill.
During their free time, DiMartino and Konietzko worked on ideas for their own animated projects and had the opportunity to pitch Avatar to Eric Coleman, head of development at Nickelodeon, while Konietzko was working on the network’s Invader Zim.
"Part of the impetus for the idea was that Nickelodeon was specifically looking for a legends-and-lore mythology show and we’re really interested in those kinds of shows," notes DiMartino. "Then, just out of our interest in anime, martial arts films, Eastern philosophies, the Showgun and things like that, we developed the idea of the Avatar world and the bending and everything else."
Konietzko says that gong from working on hit shows to creating their own contender was a natural progression for the multi-talented artists. "We took the tools we developed from various positions. We had storyboarded, directed, designed, did timing and Mike had written for his own projects." says Konietzko. "So we just honed the skills we had and found good people to fill in everywhere else. That’s how we’re here now."
While DiMartino and Konietzko think Avatar’s anime style is simply appropriate for an Asian-inspired story, they say there were other considerations in adopting the Eastern aesthetic. Konietzko comments, "We’d been working on a lot of different shows. Invader Zim in particular had such a distinct style that was really only Jhonen Vasquez’s look and no one else really knew how to draw it. At one point the production sent me over to Korea to train the overseas staff on how to draw [his] style because it was so idiosyncratic. I just realized that a lot of effort on every single American show was spent trying to teach everyone, stateside and overseas, a brand-new style. That’s cool and all, but Mike and I really wanted good animation, so we talked about using a style the overseas studios are more familiar with and comfortable with, and ideally, a style that they are better at."
Though he gives props to Asian artists for being the best creating anime, Konietzko thinks it’s ridiculous to claim that they have a monopoly on the style. "Everyone talks about anime being Japanese, and it certainly is, but we all grew up with it here, too," he says. "So It’s hard for someone to say, ‘hey, you can’t draw that style,’ because I had Robotech toys when I was a kid."
Avatar is animated in Korea at JM Animation and DR Movie. "We really wanted the overseas studios to be more involved creatively," Konietzko comments. "The animation process is really important, obviously, but in most TV production structures, it’s sort of an afterthought and used as a factory situation." He and DiMartino spent about four months in Korea working on the show’s hour-long pilot and say they got to know the animation crews personally. "We tried to set up a production that respected them as artists and gave them a chance to augment the show."
In citing influences for the look of the series, DiMatino runs off a list that includes the works of director Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away), Japanese toon house Studio Gainex (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and animation director Kôji Morimoto (Akira), who directed the Beyond segment of The Animatrix. As far as things they wanted to avoid in the show, he says, "Style-wise, we wanted to steer away from the flatness a lot of the shows have going now–the really graphic style. We wanted a more atmospheric, cinematic feel to the show."
Konietzko adds, "We also wanted to stay away from a really cartoony sense of good and evil–mustache-twisting villains and stuff like that. We tried to really get into the complex conflicts that can go on in the real world and bring that into our fanciful world and look deeper into our characters and give them a little more respect."
According to DiMartino, another thing that makes Avatar different from other action cartoon shows is the fact that its has a continuous storyline with each installment building on the previous one. "While the episodes aren’t all cliffhangers, if a character gets hurt or learns something in one show, it gets carried on to the next one. If you stick around and watch, you’ll see the characters grow and things develop."
Be sure and see how it all begins as Avatar: The Last Airbender kicks off with a one-hour special this Monday at 7 p.m. ET/PT before settling into its regular time slot on Fridays at 8 p.m.
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