Yeah, I know. This photo is stupid. Ironic B-boy posturing is rarely amusing to me, but I came back from color correction to find the studio empty, closed early for Memorial Day weekend. I put this hat on Kevin Coppa’s puppet, and one thing led to another…
RANDOM END-OF-THE-WEEK MUSINGS
–Sorry, it is true that there is no new episode airing this weekend. But a new Korra will be on next Saturday, June 2nd. And it’s a doozy. A REAL DOOZY. In the meantime, Nick.com wanted me to let you all know they made a playlist where you can watch the first seven episodes online, in case you need to catch up, or convert friends, family, babysitters, family pets, etc. Here’s the link: http://at.nick.com/Lv4P9O
–As some of you may know, Korra has been the number one show with teen audiences in the U.S. for some of these first seven episodes. As previously mentioned, I don’t put too much stock in ratings, but this is mind-blowing to me. How is a Saturday morning “cartoon” beating out prime time network shows like American Idol, Glee, The Voice, and Family Guy with teen audiences? We’re all surprised, honored, and baffled. My guess is that the 12-year-olds who were growing up on Avatar are now 16-year-olds, and Korra has sort of aged up right along with them. Whatever the reason, thanks!
–Mike and I love you guys, but we don’t take requests. We make the best show we can, telling the stories we want to tell, and then we put it out there in the world. By the time you guys see it and have “all the feels” and/or get all mad at stuff, we are working on something far, far ahead of that. It may not always go the way you want it to, but at least it is honest art, straight from our hearts. And a lot of these reactions may turn out to be knee-jerk ones in the long run, once you see where the stories and characters go. I’d rather do that than make some watered down “design by committee” thing that attempted to please everyone. If it were up to the majority of the audience, we’d probably have a show where Tahno and the Cabbage Merchant play beach games on Ember Island for 500 episodes… In short, as you guys say, I REGRET NOTHING.
–This is funny, but it never happened. I’m vegan.
–And lastly, my favorite quote from Mike this week, commenting on a cool, momentous shot from the Book 1 finale, addressing the whole fandom: “GIF that and put it on yer Tumblr.” HA!
Have a great, long weekend!
Love,
Far-from-perfect-Bryan
EDIT: The Avatar finale aired in 2008, and Korra premiered in 2012. 4 years. 12 + 4 = 16. That’s what I meant. Christie, my assistant designer, was 18 when the finale aired. And now she is 22, and she works on Korra. And she is an awesome artist. Man, that makes me (and many others on the crew) feel old!
I “performed” this “dance” for video reference of this kid in episode 302 of Avatar, “The Headband.” I rarely shy away from making a complete ass of myself in the name of fun, so I thought I’d share this with you guys. This was taped back in 2006, but I think my back still hurts.
THIS IS BEAUTIFUL
I started noodling around late last night after some mind numbing character design turn-around work, and this happened. I don’t even know if I like it, but I opened up the file today and Bolin was staring at me with those puppy dog eyes, so I figured I might as well post it.
the moment we’ve all been waiting for.
Normally, I would just ride on the coattails of whatever end-of-the-week episode sketch Joaquim posts, because he does those better than I do/can, but it looks like he didn’t get a chance to do one this week. So I did a quick Asami painting to accompany the airing of episode 107 today. Hope you guys enjoy that one! It’s a doozy.
When accessing the Avatar state fails…
Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Quick as a snake. Calm as still water. Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. Fear cuts deeper than swords.
The man who fears losing has already lost. Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Fear cuts deeper than swords.
well, this is awkward….
KorraKorraKorra
Ahhh, retakes… If you have been following this blog for a while, you should know that retakes are the bane of my existence. You’d be amazed at the number of technical retakes (mistakes in the animation) we have to fix in the average episode. We catch the vast majority of them, but some inevitably get through. Like this one. Ouch. Everything about retakes and the retake process hurts my soul.
Not that we ever claimed to be, but we are not perfect, and the show is not perfect. With an average of 14,500 finished drawings per show, and 12-26 shows in production at the same time, a few mistakes are bound to make it past the bleary eyes of the hard working animators and us at Nickelodeon. And many times it is just too late in the process to do anything about it, or the energy of the crew is needed to put out a bigger fire.
And with you guys dissecting this HD footage/GIF fodder frame by frame, our butts are even more exposed. We’re trying to figure out a way to get you guys to call the retakes for us, since you seem to have the time, energy, and interest to comb through everything. You guys won’t leak anything, right?
