(traffic noise) (passing car horn honks) (knocking on door) Hey. Hey, man. What's up? Bryan and I both attended
the Rhode Island School of Design, and that's
where we met in... It was around
1993, I think. Right? No. Okay. '95. '95? I was in high school
in 1993. All right. Oh, it wasn't--
'cause it wasn't
my first year there. No. It was-- all right. Start over. ♪ ♪ My name is Michael DiMartino,
and I am one of the creators
and co-executive producers of Avatar: The Last Airbender. My name's Bryan Konietzko-- the co-creator of Avatar
and the art director. We had worked together
since school and-and, uh, out in L.A.
for a couple of years. And we come at things from, like, a very different
point of view, but, I don't know,
there's something-- I feel like we always
made a good team. My goal was always-- create
a show and run a show and that sort of thing. And then, uh,
Bryan had similar goals, so... the time was right,
and we sort of, uh, said, "Hey, let's work together and
come up with something great." ♪ ♪ March 2002, I e-mailed Eric Coleman, the head of development
at Nickelodeon, and said, "My friend and
I are working on a show. We'd love to pitch it." I remember going out to a lunch with Bryan and just saying, "We're, we're looking
to develop shows, um, kind of in the vein of just legends, lore, deep mythology." So we talked about
the ingredients that should be in this pitch that, hopefully,
he was going to develop. KONIETZO:
He said, "Kid POV-- "keep that in mind. It's like "whether it's a kid character as your main hero or
a nonhuman character that kids can relate to,
like SpongeBob or something." I told Eric, "Look, "we'll come back in a month. "I don't know
what we're going to pitch, but we'll pitch it." HOST:
Next Peabody Award goes to
Avatar: The Last Airbender. (applause) DiMARTINO:
Now, this is very cool. Uh, we're really...
we're deeply humbled and grateful to accept
this award for Avatar. Thank you to the Peabody Award. ♪ ♪ DiMARTINO:
My recollection of the story is that we had kind of
like spread out all our ideas on the table, like, sketches or
just, you know... Concepts. just concepts, ideas of what kind of series
we would want to do. But one of the drawings was
something Bryan had done. And there was like this little
robot monkey dude. He was a little Cyclops
robot monkey, who had an arrow
on his head, and he had like a futur... Oh, he had the arrow. He had a futuristic staff. And then there was
this bipedal polar bear, who had like a kind of sci-fi like gear bag
over his shoulder. And this, like, bald kid. Did he have the arrow on his head? Nope. He didn't. Okay. He did not have the arrow
on this head at that point. KONIETZO:
I took the arrow
from the monkey and put it
on the-the guy's head and... and that was Aang. That was the first drawing
of Aang. ♪ ♪ It's one of these things--
like, I wasn't thinking
of-of Mike, but, I mean, it's such a
perfectly s... I mean,
the shape of that head. If you saw my head, it's,
it's like a-a Klingon. I mean, I have like
this-this ridge, you know. Mike-- this is an aesthetically
pleasing shape. But I liked the drawing. I didn't know what it was, but there was something
interesting about it. It then meshed with these
ideas that Mike had about all this stuff
in the South Pole. I had been watching, uh, documentaries about Shackleton
and his crazy Antarctic expedition, and ship
getting caught in the ice, and all these guys surviving against all odds. INTERVIEWER: Wait. So, you're looking
at a drawing of a little kid with an arrow
on his head, and you're like,
"I got it. Shackleton." Yeah. I don't, I don't
know how that... Well, Shackleton
was going on... Yeah, that wasn't about
that drawing specifically, but it was like... Yoga. Yoga is
when I put that together. That was funny.
It all came together. Yeah. ♪ ♪ It was pretty late at night. I was in Bikram Yoga;
I was drenched in sweat. I thought of combining
his Shackleton idea with-with this kid. I had to tell Mike this idea. DiMARTINO:
Calls me on the phone, he says, "I-I got this crazy idea." We didn't have cell phones back then, you know. DiMARTINO:
Wait. Well, how did you call me? I didn't call you. I showed up. Oh, you just
showed up. You didn't warn me. Yeah. I didn't call.
I didn't have a phone. DiMARTINO:
He came over and pitched this idea of a... a fire people attacking a...
a water tribe. That was kind of
like a big moment where like the idea of the four
nations sort of gelled together. KONIETZO:
The little robot monkey
evolved into Momo. The big polar bear thing
evolved into Appa. We hashed out, I mean, a huge
part of th-the whole world and the story arc. And two weeks later,
we pitched it. COLEMAN:
When you... when you work
in development, you're kind of very used to taking a lot of pitches
that are not very exciting or-or not very enthralling. You-you basically have,
I don't know, people, say, like seven minutes
to get your whole idea across. My take was that we broke
every possible rule. They went on and on, and they started to get
so into the details of it. It was this onslaught of, like, words
and art to Eric. (muttering) bending. (muttering)
Fire Lord and this... It was, like,
two, three hours long. And they do this
and fire comes out. And then in season three,
they're invading. And he just, he's like, "Stop." Stop talking. Kind of like, "I'm already in.
This is fantastic." Maybe that's a good lesson.
I just... We just spoke from our heart,
and we're passionate about the idea and the world
and the characters. But we need to...
we need to sort of slow down. We need to make a deal,
put this into development and then produce a pilot. DiMARTINO:
We hadn't been, like,
fully picked up yet. You've got to make a pilot. You know, like, a short
11-minute thing that they're going to
test for kids. Yeah, I went and had an apartment in Korea for, uh, three months. Worked alongside the artists
there, and Mike came over for a few weeks. And, uh, that was
an intense time. It was a lot of blood,
sweat and tears. Really, the biggest challenge was just how to live up
to this incredible vision for the show they had. (speaking Korean) (man speaking Korean) KONIETZKO:
You know, there were some
lonely times living in Korea for months, uh... just cutoff
from friends and family. Just getting up,
getting into the studio at 7:00 in the morning, working till 10:00 at night. You know, there were times
when no one in the world cared about Avatar except us. And we were just carrying this whole thing,
trying to drag it into reality and trying to show people
what it could be. COLEMAN:
One of the tricky elements was how to have action without violence. And they came back
with firebending, waterbending, airbending, earthbending--
it was just such a great way
to be able to fight without it feeling
inappropriate for a kids show. DiMARTINO:
We finished the pilot, and we turned it over
to Nickelodeon. COLEMAN:
The intention of a pilot
is to get enough people to buy in and say, "Okay, we're on board." The stakes get higher, so you have focus group testing
with kids. The response was pretty great. DiMARTINO:
Eric said, "Oh, no, it tested really good.
Everyone really liked it." And we heard that we got
picked up for 13 episodes. Our friend and future writer Josh Hamilton was there, and his reaction was,
"Get out of town!" I think he even clapped
and everything. ♪ ♪ DiMARTINO:
Uh, we just got
to Providence, Rhode Island, where Bryan and I met in 1992. KONIETZKO:
No, 1995. The Illustration Department's
happy to welcome today, um, Mike DiMartino
of Class of '96 in FAV and Bryan Konietzko,
Class of '98. Bryan and Mike. (applause) DiMARTINO:
What's happening, everybody? Season one was
by far the hardest. This is where things
exponentially expanded. The pilot was a small crew. But now to do a whole,
you know... The first pickup was
for 13 episodes, and it was... To do that many episodes
in the same amount of time we did this 12-minute
pilot is like... Yeah. Oh, my God, we needed, like,
all these people. It's crazy. My name is Joaquim Dos Santos. Katie Mattila. My name is Tim Hendrick, and I was a writer on Avatar. DiMARTINO:
We kind of handpicked the
people that we had worked with and really loved
their attitude. My name is
Benjamin Wynn. I'm Josh Hamilton. My name is
Jeremy Zuckerman. I did the music for Avatar. DiMARTINO:
Then we wanted
to kind of assemble who we thought was, like, the
crack squad of great people. I'm Sifu
Manuel Rodriguez. John O'Bryan. Angela Mueller. It may be a little hard
to pronounce, but it's Seung-Hyun Oh. You can call me Seung.
(laughs) I'm Giancarlo Volpe. Andrea Romano. SIFU KISU:
Sifu Kisu. I was the... martial art consultant. (chanting) KONIETZKO:
A huge component, obviously, of making
a martial arts epic is the martial arts, and, um,
we didn't want to just, like, copy stuff from movies and... We knew that would run dry
pretty quick and be too derivative, so we needed to, you know,
to really get down and learn some, like, real traditional
Chinese martial arts. You know, I had done martial
arts as a kid, you know. I hadn't practiced it
in years and... I hadn't seen
The Karate Kid. I couldn't get--
before Avatar, I couldn't get Mike
to watch a kung fu movie. So we said we're gonna have
to find a consultant-- like, someone who's an expert
in martial arts. We found Sifu Kisu,
and I became his student. KISU:
I met this kid who was in my class. He started to, um, excel at the, the techniques, which caught my attention,
and he talked about this idea he had
for a show. KONIETZKO:
We pitched him the concept,
and he just lit up, you know. He, he got it right away,
and he started talking
about tornado power. KISU:
He talked about airbending
this little monk. It just immediately
came to me-- Ba Gua, which is, um,
is based on The Book of Changes--
The I Ching. The waterbending was something,
you know, soft that just fit
Tai Chi completely. The Fire Nation called
for the, you know, crisp, long, clean, cutting movements
of Northern Shaolin. Earthbending-- really tight, close movements, and that just screamed
for the Hung Gar style. There was also Sifu Manny. INTERVIEWER:
Let's bring in
Master Manuel. VOLPE:
And he has
this really distinct style of kung fu that was just like...
I don't know, it's, like, rare, and rumor has it, it was
founded by blind warriors on some remote island
or something. You know,
it was very appropriate to the Toph character. RODRIGUEZ:
I practice a very obscure form called Chu Gar, commonly known as Southern Praying Mantis
kung fu. One day Kisu came and asked me, "We're looking
for an unusual style for a particular character in a
project that we're working on," obviously Toph. OH:
The basic stance for Toph is-- was this because she was blind. But-- I don't know
how to express in English, but she just won. I think this is a
really good system for this blind
character because I don't have
to look at all. Once I make contact,
he goes to move... I'm already
there, see? KISU:
Bryan was really intrigued
when he saw Manuel 'cause it's like, I mean, he comes walking out here,
he looks like a little Baptist preacher. You have no idea
that you're, you're close to one of the
best fighters in the world. (laughter and applause) KONIETZKO:
When we watched the scene from Avatar, you know,
you would know, like, "Oh, that,
that looks kind of real, like that's based
on something." The director and Bryan would
break down a script and kind of work out and
choreograph the fight scenes and stuff like that, and they'd all be videotaped. VOLPE:
You know,
you can videotape something and then watch it back instantly. So why not get a bunch of reference
for animation, you know? It's just going to look better. Second one is
a big roundhouse kick, and then he lands
on his ... KONIETZKO:
We would do an average
of three video sessions for every episode and every move. I need those fans
to close the gap with all the blasting...
(indistinct) OH:
Like, we took several ideas from the videotapes,
and then we used them for actual storyboards,
and so that we can reference in what kind of movement
we are going to use or specific angles
or what kind of fight. There were a lot of fight scenes
where, um, we'd have, you know, Aang versus Zuko. There's always two characters
if there is a fight, right? Kisu would play one guy
and Bryan would sub as the other almost, you know, exclusively. WOMAN:
And... action. Oh! Whoa! Action. (grunting and laughter) Whoa! (yells) (laughter) Whoa! (laughter) Whoa! (applause) VOLPE:
Avatar was not
an easy show to work on. I was not used to drawing stuff
in all of these crazy angles. And then, like, Bryan would say
these crazy things like, "You know, on this shot, I want you to kind of use, you
know, like a wide-angle lens." I just wanted it to be cinematic
and have space and depth and atmosphere, and you would see that
in a lot of anime-- you know, the stuff
that we really connected with-- just this incredible observation of the real world, you know, and even if it was
a fantasy thing or... They're just like--
it was very filmic. You know, there was, like, lens differences in, like, what lenses
they were drawing. Like, what do you mean "lens"? Like I'm--
it's a pencil on paper. (laughing):
I don't have a lens here. But he was,
he was going for this look and, like, I had
to learn all that stuff, and when you're, like,
fresh out of a sitcom-type show and you're-- you have a deadline
and you're trying to draw these, you know,
kung fu scenes with a wide-angle lens,
like, that's crazy. Like, they didn't prepare me
for that in art school. KONIETZKO:
We really wanted this world to run very deep, and, you know,
the threats had to be real and, um, these characters had
to be real and flawed. INTERVIEWER:
A favorite character? My favorite character? Yeah. Sokka, I think, was my favorite. I can't-- I can't say
that there's one. In a weird way I kind of feel
like I connect with all the characters,
and I feel like that's what maybe
a lot of the fans like. I feel like everyone maybe is
a little bit of Katara, a little bit of Sokka,
and a little bit of Zuko. OH:
Everyone's favorite character,
I guess, is Zuko. Definitely Zuko. He has a destiny. He has a sad history. He's always sulking and is really tormented
all the time. "Oh, I got to regain my honor and my dad
and this relationship." I think
the most beloved character and the one I relate to most is Uncle Iroh because he's fat. He's just, you know,
having a good time, just kind of
out on the adventure, and he's dealing
with these kids. VOLPE:
I'm just kind of a fan of the old wise man archetype. Such delicate humor
and such a dear character. (guzheng playing) ZUCKERMAN:
This is a guzheng. It's a Chinese zither. The instrument was created thousands of years ago. That was in, uh,
Uncle Iroh's-- that was like his final song
to his dead son. That's right, yeah,
we used it in-- right. DiMARTINO:
Uh, The Track Team is Ben Wynn and Jeremy Zuckerman--
good friends of ours who, uh, did the sound and music
for the whole series. Like with everything
on Avatar, we kind of did mix things up,
and we didn't want to just use the same composers who would do other shows or... You know, we just wanted
to get kind of a different vibe for the music and sound. WYNN:
Once we knew
we were doing Avatar, we started amassing
random instruments. This is, um... It's called the kalimba, and
it's a... African thumb piano. Uh, this is a Chinese lute, another extremely old
instrument. I don't know what
you even call these. Um, I guess bead drums. It sounds like a battle
cry or something. I got a splinter from that. This is a duduk,
Armenian wind instrument. (plays notes) And these are all over Avatar
'cause they're epic. INTERVIEWER:
So, after one of your episodes
aired that you wrote, do you ever, like,
go on the message boards to see, like, what
the immediate reaction is? No. No, I, ugh, no. (laughs):
For sure. I mean, we'd gotten a taste of it 'cause of, uh... stuff people had been
posting online, like... You know, you didn't want
to read too much, but you're curious. I think we picked up some... some kind of anime terminology that we gleaned off the message
boards at one point. Like, "Oh, we need more "shipping"
from Aang and Katara. That means, like, uh... I guess it comes
from the word "relationship." Like, uh, when you see
two people, you know, falling in love or kissing
or something, that's "shipping." That's crazy how devoted
people are to, like, "Aang's going to hook up
with Katara. No, Katara's going
to hook up with Zuko." It's two factions of people
who, uh, go for, um, the Aang/Katara pairing. And then, the Aang/Zuko... No, that's not right-- the Zuko/Katara pairing. Who hasn't felt like Aang
at some point? When you're pursuing a girl, and she's just going
to go after that guy, who really doesn't care
about her. Man... (indistinct chatter) Andrea Romano is our voice director;
she's fabulous. Growing up,
I'd seen, like, Batman the animated series and some
other, you know, other cartoons. And so, like, when the time
came, I was like, "Hey, we should get
a voice director." Like, "Oh, I wonder... "Oh, the only person
I know is Andrea. I've heard just
great things about her." I can do a whole seminar
in gasping. Is it a... (slow gasp)
type of gasp? Is it a sharp... (sharp gasp)
type of gasp? Is it a... a gasp
that has more voice to it? Which would be... hu-uh...! Or is it a... (soft gasp) O'BRYAN:
I always enjoyed when
I could, you know, just go watch the actors record. ROMANO:
Most people don't know
that in animation, the voices are recorded first. And so it's kind of like
the old radio plays, the way they were done--
a lot of actors sitting in front of microphones with a music stand
and a script, and basically running
through rehearsal, recording. Avatar was like a family. And, um, and just watching the dynamic between
that kind of family that grew together
was remarkable. And so, as we knew
the series was wrapping and that there was not going to be any more episodes made, just was never planned
for there to be more-- there was a very
finite story planned from the very beginning--
I was very sad. ♪ ♪ KONIETZO:
There's nothing glamorous about making animation. (laughs):
It's very tedious. You're just in your little box, and you've got
all your production woes, and it's just like Sisyphus
rolling this huge, tedious, nerdy rock up a hill. And then... once or twice a year, we get to go
to these conventions. They would energize us,
you know? And then we'd go back to work. (fans whooping and shouting) ♪ ♪ MIKE:
It's been fun to meet
all the fans, and... for artists like us,
who are used to just kind of just hiding away
and drawing and writing. It is rewarding
to go to those events and... and see the fans and see just
how much they are into the show. ♪ ♪ WOMAN:
You guys have made
my life so enjoyable. Aw. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you so much
for making a great show. Hey, congratulations,
you guys are doing a great job. It's a wonderful
show. Really. Thanks. MIKE:
Half our fan base, maybe more, is-is... very passionate female audience. I'm such a big
fan of the show. From the beginning, Bryan and I
always thought, like, hey, you know,
there's no reason why boys and girls can't enjoy a good action/adventure
cartoon, you know? How you doing? Good. What's your name? Marissa. Marissa? Who's your
favorite character? Uh... Avatar. Yeah? (indistinct chatter, laughter) I have to thank
you so much. I have 57--
I counted-- friends that I met
through Avatar. Really? Wow! Including a boyfriend. I just want to say
how grateful I am that you guys have created
something so wonderful. Avatar really redefined
my perception of, like, the storytelling that could be put
into a TV show. Oh, thanks. I love you guys' show. Love Avatar. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you so much
for creating a show that both kids
and adults can enjoy. Thank you so much. I love your show. I love everything about it. Thank you very much. I thought we could go for more;
it was going so well. But that was always, they were
always very steadfast on that. It was, like, this is
three seasons, and we're out. Well, I mean, if someone
came up to you and said, "I want to tell you a story, it's the best story
in the world," you're, like, "Awesome,"
they're, like, "It never ends," I would turn
and walk the other way. I don't want to hear a story
that never ends, you know. Unless it's
The Neverending Story, which is a fantastic movie. This is the end--
this is gonna be the end of Aang's story, you know? This is... this is it. (laughs) ♪ ♪ Actually, I haven't
been up here in, like, almost two years now. Imagine, if you
will... (laughs) we used to put up, like,
fan art on this wall. ♪ ♪ This was, like,
the design area. Angela Mueller was doing
character designs here, and, uh... DiMARTINO:
So this used to be-- well, there are many parts
of our office. Oh, yeah, this is... This was my office. Oh, wait. This was my office. Oh, I forgot. (laughs) There used to not
be a wall here. And then later on,
we moved into this one for the series finale. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ When we finally made it to... the big finale, um... the main thing was just like, "We're, we're at the end." You know what I mean?
At this point, it had been years
of our lives. 15-hour days and... six, seven days a week. You know? And just,
like, by that point we went crazy. DiMARTINO:
It takes so much work
to make these animated shows. You don't really see all the... blood, sweat and tears,
that kind of behind-the-scenes stuff. All the drawings,
all the, like, literally, thousands and thousands
of drawings that artists in L.A. would do,
and then overseas in Korea, all the animation drawings. I mean, it's just, like,
a ridiculous mountain of work to make... 22 minutes.
(chuckles) And for the finale, we wanted
it to be bigger and better than anything
we had done before. KONIETZO:
We finally got to the end
and-and decided we wanted to make the few
episodes like a movie... ...in-in every way possible. You know, it was kind of
like rallying for that final push to, uh, to have just everyone...
bring it strong for the end and-and just up their game,
like, even more. And once again, everyone
surpassed our expectations. Like, we knew we wanted it
to be even more epic and more cinematic, and, you know, the best
animation we could possibly do, 'cause this was the last time,
last chance we had to do it. Everybody working so hard,
everybody-- Director Oh, Joaquim. DOS SANTOS:
I mean, there was really, I think,
something to live up to, not only in the fans' eyes,
but from sort of a production standpoint, we knew
we wanted to do something that was above
and beyond what had been done up to that point. WYNN:
We'd decided that we wanted to get live strings
for the finale. We needed to step it up to where it needed to go;
we needed live strings. We were gonna do it
even if we had to pay for it. So we sent an e-mail
to that effect. The president of Nickelodeon
got the e-mail, and was, like, "This is what
I'm talking about." "We need to give
these guys... Give them the budget." He was just so
sort of moved by the fact that
we were willing to pay for it ourselves. We, you know, we were
seriously, like, we want to, you know--
this is our swan song, and we want it to be, you know,
really awesome. We had a big screening for our friends and family,
Paramount. It was decided
they would be an event. Everyone was there, you know, the directors, animators, the voice actors. It was a much bigger theater than I think
we were all expecting. I'd been picturing it
for so long. It was amazing. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ DOS SANTOS:
The thing
that I remembered most was that my wife just kept
squeezing my hand tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter. And she looked over at me
and said, "This is the best thing that
you've ever been a part of." And I-I couldn't agree more. VOLPE:
I felt like for just a moment there, I got to kind of just be purely a fan--
"They did it. (voice breaking):
Mike and Bryan did it." (laughing):
You know, I'd start crying. Like, I really thought
that they'd pulled it off. OH:
Back in the day working for Avatar was really... I was first of all really happy. Every storyboard artist
and directors we worked on together, every time
I meet them, they always says they miss... "We miss Avatar.
We miss that time." DiMARTINO:
You know, as a whole,
I'm, like, very proud of it and-and it is surreal
to look back and be, like, "Oh, that was, like, you know, "five years,
six years of my life encapsulated in, you know,
22 minutes x 61," so whatever that is. (laughs) KONIETZKO:
It is satisfying.
And you know, I look at it and there's all these, "Oh, I wish we could
have done that better. Oh, I wish
that had turned out better." But I think it's the
cumulative effect of it, and the fans, they're...
they're really just getting that whole sense of the world,
and that's what's important. You know, Nickelodeon supported
us and gave us so much freedom, and we made the show
we wanted to make. Mike and I just, just poured
our hearts into it, and luckily found all
these amazing people who were willing to sacrifice
as much as we were. Yeah, I couldn't be more... more proud with... of just what we were able
to accomplish and all the great fans
that were connected with it and of... of all ages
and all cultures, and... it was just a... a treat. And, uh, that says, "The End." And thanks so much. Yeah, thanks, everybody. (applause) Uh, Bryan and I
both attended the Rhode Island
School of Design, and that's
where we met. And it was around
1993, I think. No. Uh... It was 1995! There's no controversy! No, no, that's fine. I don't remember. See, when we
get into years, I don't remember. ♪ ♪
