It's a giant mushroom!! Maybe it's friendly!
OVERVIEW
Avatar: The Last
Airbender is an animated TV show on Nickelodeon. The world is divided into
four nations: the Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air
Nomads. Each nation represents an element (water, earth, fire, and air) that
can be manipulated by people named benders. The Fire nation starts invading the
other nations and nearly wipes out the Air Nomads. Only the Avatar, the sole
person who can bend all the elements, can stop them. Our main character Aang is
an Air Nomad Avatar that vanished for 100 years. But after being freed from an
iceberg by siblings Katara and Sokka, he returns to bring balance to the world
by learning to master all the elements to defeat the Fire Lord.
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| Concept Art of Aang in the Iceberg |
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| Rough Sketch of Aang Bending All Four Elements |
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
The show was co-created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan
Konietzko. The show's first inspiration came in 2001 when Konietzko took an old
sketch of a balding, middle-aged man and re-imagined him as a child. During
that time, DiMartino was studying a documentary about explorers trapped in the
South Pole. With these combined ideas, they established an early concept of
kids stuck in the South Pole where ice was melting due to fire people and an
air kid would rescue them. The idea of earth people came soon after. Though
being created last doesn't faze them since they're down-to-earth. Insert
rimshot.
During early development, the show was going to be set thousands of years in the future. Aang, rather
than being the last airbender, was going to be the last survivor of a technologically
advanced civilization. This can be seen in the early sketch below. Aang's
clothes and staff look futuristic and he has a robot monkey companion. The
robot monkey was replaced by a flying lemur, Momo, and the polar-bear-dog was
replaced by a flying bison, Appa. Though, the polar-bear-dog idea finally came
into fruition as Naga, the companion of the next Avatar in the follow-up
series, The Legend of Korra.
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| Early Sketch of Aang with Animal Companions |
Aang's friends Katara and Sokka were created since DiMartino
and Konietzko wanted a sibling rivalry. This may be due to them both having
sisters. Yes, sisters like me are so inspirational! The co-creators also liked
the idea of the sister being able to bend while the brother couldn't. It sucks
to be normal. And to counteract Aang being a master airbender, they decided
Katara would only know the basics of waterbending. From this stemmed the idea
that she wasn't properly taught because she was the last waterbender in the
South Pole. And at first, her brother Sokka was conceived as a 13-year-old. But
producer Eric Coleman suggested he be "aged up" to 15 years old.
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| Left to Right: Katara, Aang, Momo, and Sokka |
CLOSING
Avatar: The Last Airbender is an incredibly crafted show. It
has action, adventure, comedy, heart, beautiful aesthitics, and I'll stop listing
now. There are so many amazing things this show does and I have a word count
limit. To learn more, you can check out the links below.
Sources:
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