Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We want our villains and antagonists to have distinct motivations.
It's hard to surprise people with everything leaking on the Internet.
It wouldn't be the Avatarverse without some hairstyle changes, now would it?
We're always striving to make Avatar look like a cinematic, live-action movie.
Hopefully, when we're done with the 'Korra' saga we can put our stamp on a movie.
I think Korra, I later realized she was inspired by my sister, who is pretty tough.
Animation is incredibly difficult - much like doing a giant sweeping fantasy novel.
Any political or philosophical agenda can and will be perverted by power and/or fear.
In an early version of the story, I thought Aang could shepherd a herd of twenty bison.
I am infamous for writing fight scenes beat for beat, punch for punch. I can't help it!
When you have a fully-realized Avatar, it's like Superman, and how do you make that interesting?
I just follow what inspires me as an artist and a storyteller, and stay true to myself in my work.
After 'Avatar' ended, I spent a lot of time watching MMA and kickboxing fights on UFC, WEC, DREAM, and K-1.
The 'Korra' crew were like a family, and they're so unbelievably talented and dedicated, and got along so well.
You've got to earn it; you're not just handed anything in life. That's why no one starts out as a perfect master.
Of course, Mike and I debate and argue - we used to play Ping-Pong to settle arguments. But then Mike got really good.
Mike and I like a balance of tones. We never set out to make an overtly silly show or an overly serious dramatic show.
We feel like we're kind of movie guys working in TV. So we're looking forward to that day when we get to work in that medium.
I try to make the kinds of things I want to see out there in the world, and hope they end up resonating with other people too.
I like nothing more than a character sacrificing himself or herself for the sake of others. That's drama at its finest for me.
We really liked the magic of 'Harry Potter' and 'The Lord of the Rings,' but we could never figure out where the powers came from.
Korra and Aang ultimately stand for freedom, equality, and basic human rights, and I think Mike and I are fine with pushing that agenda.
'Korra' is its own series. Obviously it's tied in, in the same world, a similar story, but it's not just 'Book Four' of 'The Last Airbender.'
We just don't subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can't have an action series led by a female character. It's kinda nonsense to us.
There is such a flood of TV shows, movies, video games, comics, and books, but somehow 'Avatar' is still being discovered by each new generation.
While we were in the middle of 'Avatar' we got a lot of volatile reaction from fans. They were very upset with the direction we were taking Zuko.
Mike and I figured out a lot about the world, characters and story in the initial two weeks between creating 'Avatar' and pitching it to Nickelodeon.
I'll just say that America - us included - has a long way to go to catch up with the animated work being done in a handful of countries, namely Japan.
Mike and I are always drawn to the idea that there is light and dark inside every being, rather than the old two-dimensional trope of good versus evil.
Book 4 is the end of the 'Korra' series. So we've got 52 episodes planned. When all is said and done it will have taken I think about five years to make.
In a lot of ways, their journeys are opposite of each other's: Aang was a peace-loving monk, through and through, whereas Korra is a dyed in the wool fighter.
I think Mike and I would absolutely love to do feature animation. Either another story, or it if worked out, one in the 'Avatar' world. We would be really excited.
I'm just making 'Threadworlds' out of the things I love and that I'm passionate about learning. When we created 'Avatar,' Michael DiMartino and I did the same thing.
With 'Korra' we've really taken a lot of time to craft it. We're aiming pretty high, and in order to keep up the quality it just takes a lot of time and a lot or work.
'Avatar' means so many things to so many different people. When I think of the creation of it, I think of me and Mike at the computer in a little apartment in Burbank.
Aang was an airbending prodigy, but didn't even discover he could bend the other three elements on his own; whereas Korra was bending three of the elements at age four.
It is a long story how we finally ended up with the title simply being 'The Legend of Korra,' but in a poetic way, I think Korra's big Type A personality willed it to happen!
Stories often take their own course once you start to write them, especially when you have the benefit of a writers' room and a team of people augmenting and adding to the material.
Fans are more interested in imagining relationships between a myriad of pairings. But they're profoundly disinterested in seeing any of those things manifest themselves on the show.
We don't dwell on the business of Korra restoring everyone's bending in 'Book 2,' but we figured she got around to helping the innocent people who lost it in the months between the seasons.
That's been the case for decades. 'The Simpsons,' 'King of the Hill' - they do the preproduction in America, and the production is in Korea or in some cases China, or occasionally Japan or India.
We draw inspiration directly and indirectly from all sorts of things, like movies, documentaries, TV dramas, novels, non-fiction books, animation, science and nature shows, and our own life experiences.
I always felt like Azula and Long Feng were much more interesting villains and three-dimensional characters than Ozai, who was just sort of a big jerk. Like a really big jerk, but not very complex or human.
Though we did have a few main characters in 'Avatar' who represented the non-benders of the world, most of the people we focused on were benders. However, benders are the minority in their world population.
I am certainly proud to add 'Korra' to the pantheon of TV characters, which is perpetually sorely lacking in multifaceted female characters who aren't sidekicks, subordinates or mere trophies for male characters.
It seems to me virtually any ideology, no matter how intrinsically benign, can be used to oppress. And any group with power, no matter how well-meaning, ultimately corrupts and ends up exploiting its advantage to some extent.
I think it's touching that the fans feel so close to the characters that they feel personally hurt. I've felt that way in plenty of TV shows - 'Game of Thrones,' 'Mad Men.' How could they do that to that character? That's drama.
I thought Korra was 17 so Mike and I have to get our stories straight. The main characters are in their late teens, we've always loved those kind of teen love triangle type stories and there was plenty of that in the original series.
Nickelodeon came to us at the end of 2009 with a twelve episode 'mini-season' already green-lit for a new series. They let us do pretty much whatever we wanted with it, as long as it was in the 'Avatar' universe and featured bending.
We have always put the quest for balance at the center of our storytelling, whether it is the struggle to find it within one character, between a character and society, between disparate cultures or between humans and their environment.