Despite the fact that we refer to them as
American cartoons, most of the actual animation
for our favourite Nickelodeon and Cartoon
Network cartoons 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. The Korean animators
were hardworking, but punished for their creativity.
But the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender
aimed to change this.
Hello and welcome to The Canipa Effect. This
is an animation spotlight on Avatar: The Last
Airbender.
Avatar is the creation of showrunners Michael
DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, who split their
tasks between story and art. Michael would
be story editor, while Bryan would take on
the role of art director and main character
designer. During his career, Bryan had worked
on King of the Hill, Family Guy, Invader Zim,
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.
"Prince Zuko, consider the safety of the crew."
"The safety of the crew doesn't matter!"
Animation creator LeSean Thomas made a similar
observation while working on The Boondocks,
where he realised 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.
Bryan spent four months in Korea working with
the animators from dawn til 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 Moi 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, Bryan
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 Yoo Young
Ki at Tin House helping design the characters
for the pilot and later, Ryu Ki Hyun helped
redesign Aang for the show to make sure they
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, Ryu was later asked
to design the characters of Jet’s gang,
who the American artists were 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’ll move as well. The team in
the US recognised 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’s gang return
for Season 2 as well.
Ryu Ki Hyun worked at JM Animation as an animator
and designer until 2006, where he was offered
a six-figure salary to move to the United
States and work on the Spectacular Spiderman.
He was later invited back to Avatar for The
Legend of Korra where he served as character
designer and supervising producer at Nickelodeon.
But more on that in a future video.
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, double, triple
what they were making at home.
"I mean, look at us!"
"We're travelling 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 it, 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 5000 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, Seung-Hyun Oh. 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 the storyboards in more creative
ways. Seung-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’d brought in showrunner Bryan Konietzko’s
martial arts teacher to design the action
of the show. Here, Bryan and Sifu Kisu would
act out scenes together, implementing a different
style of martial arts for each of the four
kingdoms. Bryan himself would even 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 Mun Jeong In understood 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 1, Zuko’s fire feels angry. And depending
on Aang’s mood, his airbending 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 he
wasn’t the only one. For Toph, 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 students
to record the footage to more accurately provide
reference for a small character like Toph.
Her scenes are my absolute favourite 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. Aang bounces around
constantly, but Toph always tries to keep
two feet on the ground, because narratively,
that’s how she sees.
Likewise, animator Jeong Hae Young found that
Sokka was her favourite character to animate
for. Although it took a lot more work, his
personality and slapstick gags are the result
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 there’s one annoying thing that makes
some of the action scenes harder to love.
When Bryan 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, but keep the image
sharp and dynamic. But by the time it makes
it to screen, someone’s gone and blurred
the frames, lessening the impact of shots
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 were 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 that you 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 has finished.
Avatar was surprising when I was a kid. At
the time, I was watching Fosters’ Home for
Imaginary Friends, Spongebob, Fairly Odd Parents,
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, Jae Myung 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 Canipa Effect. I just
wanted to apologise, because I almost definitely
messed up a few Korean names in this video.
There’s also a few topics that I didn’t
cover in this video, but they’ll be discussed
in a video about The Legend of Korra which’ll
be out in a month or two. But before we go,
I want to thank these legendary people for
supporting the channel. In particular, I’d
like to thank Austin Hardwicke, deadermeat,
Edwin Shale, Frog-kun, Jacob Bosley, Jawburst,
JRPictures, Julio Ruiz, my own mother, Noland
Soga and ThatJuanArtist. If you’d like to
help support future industry spotlights, feel
free to visit Patreon.com/TheCanipaEffect.
