Part of what made Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra's four bending styles so captivating was that each one was inspired by actual forms of martial arts. Former Avatar animator and episode director Giancarlo Volpe recently, albeit humorously, summarized how the animation team successfully adapted those techniques in order to bring the show's iconic fight scenes to life.
In response to an Entertainment Insider video about Avatar's usage of reference actors, Volpe posted a more condensed list of steps on "How to animate authentic feeling martial arts." The four steps, in his words, went as followed: "Hire martial artists, bonus points if they are extra imaginative, Actually pay said martial artists, Open the schedule to film non stop kung fu reference meetings" and "Give artists extra time to draw the 100,000 required poses."
However, Volpe ultimately praised the Entertainment Insider video for effectively breaking down Avatar's storyboarding and choreography process, which allowed the show to stand apart from other popular fantasy-action series at the time like Dragon Ball Z. "Salty soapbox rant aside, please watch this great video Insider did, highlighting Sifu Kisu and the rest of the martial artists who helped make Avatar and Korra so incredible," he noted.
As the video explained, fight choreographer Sifu Kisu selected different real-world fighting styles to match the philosophies and poses of the four elements and their respective nations. This included waterbending being inspired by tai chi, airbending by bagua, firebending using Northern Shaolin-style kung fu and hung ga for earthbending. (One technique Insider left out was Toph's Southern Praying Mantis-style earthbending moves.) After Avatar and Korra episodes were scripted and storyboarded, reference actors would then perform fight moves in accordance to how they and Kisu interpreted the script, which the animators would then use as a blueprint to depict a character's movements in combat. For fights or environmental moves that were too unrealistic to achieve consecutively, the martial artists would perform their moves in separate intervals that the animation team would eventually merge together.
Created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, both Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are currently streaming on Netflix.
Source: Twitter
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