words that strangers put in our mouths

slavicinferno:

Joaquim Dos Santos, who worked extensively on two of the pinnacles of animated television inJustice League Unlimited and Avatar: The Last Airbender and is now the storyboard artist on the Avatar follow-up, discusses what sets the new series apart from its predecessor:

Both series are about discovery, the hero looking within themselves and finding out more about themselves. Yes there are a lot of aspects about Korra that are the opposite of Aang, but that’s not what informed the decision to go in that direction, Mike and Bryan just had this really cool idea and they went with it. As it turns out, as you will see, that Korra discovers stuff about herself that is shown right up front in the first episode completely the opposite of Aang, but there is stuff that she might relate to about Aang, she’s her own person. I don’t think the decision was ‘just do something that is opposite Aang.’

Thousands of fans saw the first two episodes during the preview weekend, what inspired the look of the show’s setting, Republic City?
A lot of it is old Shanghai/industrial revolution. We scoured the internet for a ton of references and we went and picked up a ton of books, mostly used books, that just had a ton of great photo-reference and speaking with the Art Director’s hat on, we wanted all the [backgrounds] to feel like they were painted, to have a paint-style rough look. We hired two amazing [background] painters, young kids right out of school, that really just went for it. The mandate was for there not to be any Photoshop pre-made textures you tend to see a lot in US animation, just laid on things [making] the backgrounds feel manufactured. We wanted each one to feel like a painting, one you could touch and hold even though they are done on computers.

There’s plenty more at the link. [Newsarama]

io9.com

Okay, while I’m pretty sure that everybody and their mother have already seen the first two episode at least twice, try to tune in this Saturday. This post by legend-of-korra made a really good point:

And we should all turn on the T.V. during the premier because even if we’ve already seen the episode (numerous times), higher ratings will lead to more merchandising, better timeslots, more money for the series, and maybe more episodes!

So please! Try to make it if you can! Nickelodeon, Bryke, and Korra thank you for your time. :)