Avatar: The Last Airbender Documentary (Full) - Avatar Spirits

so Brian and I both attended the Rhode Island School of Design and that's where we met and it was around 1993 I think right No okay 95 95 I was in high school in 1993 all right Oh was it cuz it wasn't my first year there no 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 is Brian it's go the co-creator of avatar and the art director we had worked together since school and out in LA for a couple of years 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 Brian had similar goals so the time was right and we sort of said hey let's work together and come up with some great March 2002 email Derrick Coleman the head of development at Nickelodeon said my friend and I are working on a show we'd love to pitch it remember going on to a lunch with Brian and just saying we're looking to develop shows kind of in the vein of just legends Lord deep mythology so we talked about the ingredients that should be in this pitch that hopefully he was going to develop they said kid pov keep that in mind whether it's a kid character is your main hero or a nonhuman character that kids can relate to a spongebob or something I told Eric look we'll come back in a month I don't know what we're gonna pitch but but we'll pitch grateful to this award wrapped art thank you Peabody Award my recollection story is that it kind of like spread out all our ideas on the table like sketches or just you know concepts ideas of what kind of series we would want to do but one of the drawings was something Brian 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 future yeah there he had a futuristic staff and then there was this bipedal polar bear head like him kind of sci-fi like gear bag over his shoulder and this like bald kid did he have the arrow on his head no he didn't okay he did not have the arrow on his head at that point I took the arrow from the monkey and put it on the guy's head Ben and that was Aang I was first drawing a bang it's one of these things like that wasn't thinking of Mike but I mean it's such a perfectly like I'm in the shape of that head if you saw my head it's like a Klingon I mean I have like this ridge you know Mike it's 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 and then meshed with these ideas that Mike had about all this stuff in the South Pole I had been watching a documentaries about Shackleton's crazy Antarctic expedition and ship getting caught the ice and all these guys surviving against all odds this wait so you're looking at a drawing of a tip with an arrow in his head feel like I got it exactly yeah I don't know how shocked that was going on that wasn't about that drawing specifically but it was like Yoga Yoga is when I put that that was fun is old India it was pretty late at night I was a Bikram yoga I was drenched in sweat I thought of combining his shackleton idea with this kid I had to tell Mike this idea calls me on the phone says that I got this crazy idea we didn't have cell phones back then you know wait how did you call me I didn't call you I showed up oh you just showed up he didn't why I didn't call get it out a phone he came over and pitched this idea of a fire people attacking a Water Tribe that was kind of like a big motor like the idea of the Four Nations sort of gelled together the little robot monkey evolved into Momo the big polar bear thing evolved into Appa we hashed out I mean a huge part of the the whole world the story arc and two weeks later we pitched it 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 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 - Erik is bending yeah fire wardens this was like two three hours long do this and fire comes out then in season three either invading and he just is like stop stop talking kind of like I'm already in this is fantastic maybe that's a good lesson like just we just spoke from her and we're passionate about the idea and the world and the characters but we need to we need to slow down we need to make a deal put this into development and then produce a pilot we hadn't been like fully picked up yet you got to make a pilot if you know like a shorter 11 minute thing that they're gonna test for kids yeah I went at an apartment in Korea for three months worked alongside the artists there and Mike came over a few weeks and I was in intense time there's 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 yeah I'm Joey Logano but the other 20 dating hang on listen yes about Iran could totally pass denied it : how poverty you know there were there were some lonely times living in Korea for months just cut off from friends and family just getting up getting into studio at 7:00 in the morning work until 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 the people that it could be one of the tricky elements was how to have action without violence and they came back with firebending waterbending urban earth and it was just such a great way to be able to fight without it feeling inappropriate for a kids show we finished the pilot when we turn it over to Nickelodeon the intention of a pilot it's 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 Eric - oh don't ested 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 acree action was get out of town I think even clapped and everything you we're just got to Providence Rhode Island where Brian and I met moving I teamed up to No 1995 the illustration departments happy to welcome today Mike DiMartino of class of 96 and f AV and Bryan Konietzko class of 98 right season one was by far the hardest this is where things exponentially expanded and the pilot is a small crew but now to do a whole you know the first pick up 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 oh my god we need to like all these people it's crazy my name is Joaquim dos santos katie Mattila my name is tim Adric and I was a writer on Avatar we kind of and picked the people that we had worked with and really look love their attitude my name is Benjamin win I'm Josh Hamilton my name is Jeremy Zuckerman I did the music for avatar then we wanted to kind of assemble what we thought was like the crack squad of great people I'm Sifu level Rodriguez John O'Brien Angela Miller may be a little hard to phone us what the senior Oh can't call me some I'm Giancarlo Volpe Andrea Romano siku Kishu I was the Oh art consultant a huge component obviously making martial art epic is the martial arts and we didn't want to just like copy stuff from movies and new that would run dry pretty quick and be too derivative so we need to you know to really get down and learn some like real traditional Chinese martial arts and you know I had done martial arts as a kid you know I hadn't practiced it years and I hadn't seen the Karate Kid I couldn't get out of bed before avatar I couldn't get Mike to watch it comfy so we said we're gonna have to find a consultant like someone who's an expert in martial arts they found secrecy Sutent and I became his student I met this kid who's in my class he started to excel at the techniques which caught my attention and talked about this idea he had for a show we pitched in the concept and he just lit up you know he got it right away and he started talking about tornado power he talked about airbending this little monk it just immediately came to me ba gua which is um is based on the book of changed the e ching the waterbending was something you know soft that just fit tight she completely the fire nation called for the you know crisp long clean cutting movements of northern shaolin earthbending really tight closed movements and that just screamed for um-hum GARP style there was also a seafood mani let's break it a nested Manuel 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's very appropriate to the Toth character I practice a very obscure form called Chu cop commonly known as southern praying mantis kung foo one day ki soo came and asked me we're looking for an unusual style for a particular character in a project that we're working on obviously tough so the basic stems for tall fries 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 Brian was really intrigued when he saw Manuel because it's like I mean he comes walking on it looks like a little Baptist preacher did you have no idea that you're you want it close to one of the best fighters in the world we watched the scene from Avatar you you know you would know like well that that looks kind of real like that's based on something the director and Ryan would would break down a script and kind of work out choreograph the yeah the fight scenes and stuff like that and then they'd all be videotaped 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 gonna look better second was big roundup taking any left and we do an average of three video sessions for every episode and every move like we took several ideas from the videotapes and then we used for actual storyboard and so that we can represent what kind of movement we are gonna use or specific angles or we're gonna fight there were a lot of fight scenes where um we'd have you know anger suzuko there's orders to cut to characters if there's a fight right kisi would play one guy and Brian would sub that's the other almost you know exclusively avatar was not an easy show to work on I was not used to drawing stuff in all these crazy angles and then like Brian would say these crazy things like you know in 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 to have an 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 I mean lens like I'm the pencil on paper I don't 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 of 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 we really wanted this world to run very deep and and you know the the threats had to be real and these characters had to be real and flawed favorite character my favorite Kent game 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 he's a little bit of guitar a little bit of soccer and a little bit of Zuko every favorite character I guess it's Zuko definitely Zuko he has a destiny as a sad history he's always sulking and it's really tormented all the time and it's know I got to regain my honor and my dad in this relationship I think the most beloved character and the one I relate to most is uncle Iroh because he's fat this is you know having a good time scouting out on the adventure and it's dealing with these kids I'm just kind of a fan of the old wise man archetype such delicate humor and so such a dear character this is a GU Jim it's a Chinese zither so the instrument was created thousands of years ago that was in uncle iris that was like his final song - that's right yeah we used it in Zona right the track team is been Winn and Jeremy Zukerman good friends of ours who did the sound of 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 same composers who would do the other shows or you know we just wanted to get kind of a different vibe for the music and sad once we knew we were doing our tart we started amassing random instruments this is a it's called the kalimba and it's a African come piano um this is a Chinese lute another extremely old instrument I don't would even call this uh I guess be drums it sounds like a battle cry or something here got a splinter for me this is a Dudek armenian wind instrument these are all over avatars they're epic so after one of your episodes air that you wrote do you know like go on the message boards to see like what he made the reaction no no I know for sure I mean we've gotten a taste of it because of stuff people have been posting online like yeah we don't want to read too much but you you're curious I think we picked up some some kind of ammon anime terminology that we've gleaned off the message boards at one point like oh we need more shipping for manga and Katara that means like I guess it comes from the word relationship like 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 gonna hook up with guitar and no guitars gonna hook up with Zuko two factions of people who go for of the Aang Terra pairing and then the eggs you go no that's not right the Zuko guitar Oh Perry who hasn't felt like it well I can get some point when you're pursuing a girl and she's just gonna go after that guy really doesn't care about her man under hermano is our voice director she's fabulous growing up I'd seen like Batman the Animated Series and this mother you know other cartoons and so like when the time came I was like maybe we should get a new voice director like oh I wonder oh the only person I was Andreea I've heard just great things about her I can do a whole seminar in gasping what is it a type of gasp is it a sharp type of gas is it a a gas but has more voice to it which would be uh or is it uh I always enjoyed when I could you know just go watch the actors record 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 and just watching the dynamic between that kind of family that grew together was remarkable and so as we knew the series was rapping and that there was not going to be any more episodes made that just was never planned for there to be more there was a very finite story plan from the very beginning I was very sad there's nothing glamorous about making animation it's very tedious you're just in your little box and you've got all your production woes 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 it would energize this you don't only go back to work it's been fun to meet all the fans and for artists like this who are used to just kind of 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 hasn't be my life so enjoyable oh thank you so much for making me free show hey I'm graduation guys doing great job yeah thanks thank you half our fan base maybe more is is very passionate female audience from the beginning Bryan and I always thought like hey we you know there's no reason why boys and girls can't enjoy a good action-adventure cartoon you know I you know was good Marissa who's your favorite character I have to thank you so much I have 57 I counted friends but I met through avatar including a boyfriend I just want to say how grateful I am that you guys have created something so avatar really redefined my perception of like the storytelling they can be put into a TV show go downtown so much for creating a show that enjoy thank you I thought we could go for more it was going so well but that was always they were always very steadfast on that 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 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 fantastic movie this is the end this is gonna be the end of story you know this is this is it actually haven't been up here in like almost two years now imagine if you will we used to put up like fan art on this wall this was like the design area Angela Muller was doing character designs here so this used to be well there are many parts of our office oh yeah this is so this is my office the way it was just my office 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 if the main thing was just like we're at the end you know I mean at this point it had been years of our lives 15 hour days six seven days a week you know it's like by that point we were crazy thanks 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 LA would do and then overseas and Korea all the animation drawings I mean it's just like ridiculous mountain of work to make 22 minutes and for the finale we want it to be bigger and better than anything we had done before we finally got to the end and decided we wanted to make the last few episodes like a movie and in every way possible you know it was kind of like rallying for that final push to just have everyone bring it strong for the end and and just up their game like even more and and once again everyone surpassed our expectation that like we knew we wanted it to be even more epic more cinematic and you know the best animation we could possibly do because this was the last time last chance we had to do it everybody working so hard everybody in director oh and Joaquin 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 would have been done up to that point he decided that we wanted to get live stream it needs it now to step it up to where I needed to go we knew the last times we were gonna do it if we even if we had to pay for it so we sent an email to that effect president of Nickelodeon got the emails like this talking about we need to give these guys give him them he was just so so I've sort of moved by the fact that we were willing to pay for ourselves we were 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 a friends-and-family paramount it was decided they would be a an event everyone was there you know the directors animators the voice actors that was a much bigger theater and I think we were all expecting I've been picturing it for so long as amazing the thing that I remember most was that my wife just kept squeezing my hand tighter tighter tighter tighter and she looked over me and said this is the best thing that you've ever been a part of and I couldn't agree more I felt like for just a moment there I got to kind of just be purely a fan they did it Mike and Brian did it you know a custom start crying like that I really thought that they pulled it off back in the day working for avatar was first of all every storyboard artists and directors we worked on together every time I meet them they always test a miss miss oh we missed that time you know as a whole very proud of it it is surreal to look back and be like oh that was like you know five years six years of my life encapsulated in 22 minutes time 61 it is satisfying you know I look at it there's all these which we could have done that better I wish that it turned out better but I think it's the cumulative effect and the fans there they're really just getting that whole sense of 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 are willing to sacrifice as much as we were more proud we loved just what we were able to accomplish all the great fans that connected with it of all ages all cultures it was just a treat and that says the end and thanks so much yeah thanks everybody uh-ah Brian and I both attended the Rhode Island School design and that's where we met and it was around 1993 I think now uh it was 1985 I go country I don't remember to see when we get into two years

Channel: UltimateKorraTV

Views: 480,838

Keywords: Nickelodeon, Documentary, Avatar: The Last Airbender (TV Program)

Id: vdw6YmO8q_k

Length: 32min 19sec (1939 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2013