Breaking Down Avatar: The Last Airbender's Incredible Animation | Animator Spotlight

[Music] despite the fact that we refer to them as american cartoons most of the actual animation for our favorite nickelodeon and cartoon network shows were created in south korea taiwan or the philippines the storyboards and designs would be created by in-house artists but underpaid overseas animation studios have often been treated like machines storyboards go in animation comes out these animators are hard-working but punished for their creativity but the creators of avatar the last airbender aim to change this hello and welcome to the canaper effect this is an animation spotlight on avatar the last airbender [Music] avatar is the creation of show runners michael dimartino and brian konitzko who split their tasks between story and art michael would be the story editor while brian would take on the role of art director and main character designer during his career brian had worked on king of the hill family guy invades him among others and one thing he'd noticed is that despite these american studios largely relying on korean animators there was little respect for them consider the safety of the crew the safety of the crew doesn't matter animation creator lashon thomas made a similar observation while working on the boondocks where he realized that the american teams didn't actually understand the creative process that was going into their own shows prompting him to move to korea himself when nickelodeon commissioned a pilot for avatar in 2003 the team's first thought was the animation teams being fans of anime they initially contacted a whole bunch of japanese studios only to receive no response this led them to look across the sea to korea instead and rather than selecting a large studio that could reliably replicate their vision they instead looked towards tin house a smaller creative powerhouse that had recently released their own feature film wonderful days brian spent four months in career working with the animators from dauntel dusk where he learned how korean animation worked and built friendships with the staff those friendships proved useful because those who'd worked on the pilot left tin house to set up a new studio jm animation and avatar the last airbender was offered as one of the studio's earliest projects with help from dr movie and later moy animation i mentioned that the avatar creators wanted to change the system and a large part of this was giving the korean artists more creative influence and this immediately came through with the character designs in the past brian had to travel to korea to teach the animation team behind invader zim how to draw in that very distinct style but this time it happened the other way around with animator yu yung ki at tin house helping to design the characters for the pilot and later jm animation's ryuki hun helped redesign aang for the show to make sure he and the rest of the cast were easy to animate an essential step towards creating a show with consistently exciting animation this wasn't the only character design work he ended up doing either vue was later asked to design the characters of jet's gang who the american artist was struggling to depict a personality for but that's why it's great to hire animators as character designers because they're not just thinking about the still image they're thinking about how it will move as well the team in the us recognized that these designs were kind of stylistically different to the rest of the show but in the end they loved them so much that they had jet skang return for season 2 as well vukihoon worked at jm animation as an animator and designer until 2006 when he was offered a six-figure salary to move to the united states and work on the spectacular spider-man he was later invited back to avatar for legend of korra where he served as character designer and supervising producer and nickelodeon these attempts to bring korean animators to the us was a big deal in the mid-2000s with roughly 100 artists making the move the primary reason is the large salaries offered double triple what they were making at home i mean look at us we're traveling around the world making easy money having fun with no parents to tell us what to do but the korean staff were later disappointed to learn that it's a lot less than they'd previously thought due to the high rent and insurance payments in los angeles but they still take these opportunities and money isn't the only reason by moving from korea to the us you're able to actually show off your abilities you're not constrained by the ideas of an american 5 000 miles away instead it's your ideas that make it to screen this was also the case for animator and co-founder of jm animation sung aw for book 1 he served as the timing director while also working as an uncredited supervising director for the korean team for avatar jm animation was given the unique freedom to determine the timing of the animation themselves this was yet another shackle that the korean artists didn't have to deal with now being able to interpret storyboards in more creative ways sun hyun later gained even more freedom when he too was offered to move to the us to serve as supervising storyboard director as a part of his job he was largely responsible for designing the action of the final battle between aang and firelord ozai having someone on storyboards who understood the animation capabilities of the staff was essential he could get ridiculous he could draw over elaborate fire animation into the storyboards and show off how aang's abilities have grown throughout the show and know that the animation team could pull it off from the start the animators were already adding extra touches on the american side they brought in show runner brian konitzko's martial arts teacher to design the action of the show in this way brian and sifu kisu would act out scenes together implementing a different style of martial arts for each of the four kingdoms brian would also record himself performing character action as a reference for the staff but the one thing they couldn't reference was the effects water earth fire air long ago the creators of avatar invented the idea of elemental bending a way of having fights that aren't overly violent but everything changed when they had to animate it these elements can get complex and as the series goes on audiences expect to see them evolve they're an extension of the characters after all and without this attention to detail from the animation teams you get proper and intense martial arts but effects that feel entirely out of place and generally just look a bit pathetic you know something like this effects animator moon joong yin this and for every storyboard he'd amp it up instead of focusing on what the fire should actually look like he instead took everything at its impression for example in much of season one zuko's fire feels angry and depending on ang's mood his air bending can either feel light and playful or furious and unrelenting animation can tell a story and that's the philosophy the team took into the whole show i mentioned before that the show was choreographed by an actual martial arts teacher but sifu kisu wasn't the only one for toff they brought in sifu manuel rodriguez a master of the lesser known southern praying mantis style but that said he's kind of a larger guy so he'd get his son or his student to record the footage to more accurately provide reference for a small character like toth her scenes are my absolute favorite in the show and like with the effects the animation team added extra impact to each of her motions forceful and strong poses with quick sharp hand movements even outside of the fights the characters are all animated in ways that fit their personality ang bounces around constantly but toff always tries to keep two feet on the ground because narratively that's how she sees likewise animator zhong hey young found that soccer was her favorite character to animate for although it took a lot more work his personality and slapstick gags are the results of the animators seeing the already excellent storyboards and going further with it adding even more frames of animation for this reason avatar the last airbender has won awards for individual excellence in animation character animation directing and storyboards and they absolutely deserve it i enrolled in a fire nation school and i'm going back tomorrow enrolled in what but it's not all good news the animation team on the show is stunning better than most anime series we cover on this channel but this one annoying thing that makes some of the action scenes harder to love when brian was recording his fights with sifu kisu on a regular camcorder it was going to pick up motion blur the animation staff in korea will interpret that as smears which have the feeling of speed that keep the image sharp and dynamic but by the time it makes its screen someone's gone and blurred the frames lessening the impacts of sorts like this one this is a similar issue on the currently airing anime series the god of high school which also largely relies on martial arts reference footage for me it demonstrates a lack of trust in the team and a fear that the show will look choppy even though avatar clearly has inspirations in japanese anime the choppiest medium you'll find anime does use motion blur though but they generally have a restraint that avatar can sometimes struggle with but that one annoying thing aside avatar is nothing but accomplished even though they're working with character designs from the other side of the world the teams in the us and korea are able to keep the show expressive and moving making sure that both the jokes and the more emotional moments hit their mark these aren't still images but they instead feel like real people you can get attached to and while the script is great the animation design work and storyboards are all a massive part of making us care about them even a decade after the show was finished avatar was surprising when i was a kid at the time i was watching foster's home for imaginary friends spongebob fairly oddparents but the cinematic design of avatar made it feel like something entirely new at the time my only reference for an anime was pokemon but avatar consistently looked better than that and i didn't know it at the time but i now understand that it was the creative trust between the staff in the us and korea that made it special in 2010 jaemong yoo an animation director on the last airbender left jm animation with a group of other staff to create studio mir this time not just working on animation but working as a true creative force for a brand new nickelodeon show but that's a legend for another video thanks for watching the camper effect i just wanted to quickly apologize because i almost definitely messed up a few korean names in this video there's also a few topics that i didn't cover but they'll be discussed in a video about the legend of korra which will be out in a month or two hopefully i'm awful with keeping these promises but before we go i'd like to thank these legendary people for supporting the channel in particular i'd like to thank austin hardwick deader meets edwin shale frogkun jacob bosley jawburst jr pictures julio overweight my own mother nolan soga and that you an artist if you'd like to help support future industry spotlights please feel free to visit patreon.com the canaperfect you

Channel: The Canipa Effect

Views: 211,880

Keywords: Anime review, anime reviewer, canipa, anime, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Legend of Aang, Avatar, Netflix, Animation, Korean, JM Animation, Nickelodeon, Katara, Aang, Zuko, Toph, Sokka, The Legend of Korra, Korra, ATLA, Cartoon

Id: DZB1lQRdTrI

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2020