My Avatar/Korra inspired animation!
Here’s my first attempt at animation, inspired by the Avatar/Korra Universe! The idea came from watching the series with my roommate and wanting to try my hand at creating my own unique Avatar. I came up with the idea for an Earthbending Avatar from long ago (before the original series takes place), one that Toph would have looked up to. The idea was that the Avatar was regularly attacked by various benders wanting to prove their strength. I tried to keep the animation somewhat in the style of the series, but I added my own unique ideas to it.
Since this was my first attempt, I used numerous references to help me out along the way. This project really provided a great challenge for me as an artist because it forced me to not only come up with character designs, but also try and animate them in a way that felt familiar to the show. I have a background in martial arts so that really helped me in coming up with the poses for the scenes, but most of the movements come from the series in one way or another. Coming up with shot compositions and where I wanted the camera to be also provided a unique challenge that I had never dealt with before. I had to figure out how many panels I needed to put in to make sure that the overall motion was captured and easily identified. It is definitely still rough and unpolished, but I am pretty happy with the overall outcome.
The animation consists of 255 hand-drawn images. I drew the images out on index cards using a col-erase pencil to plan them out, and then I went back and redrew them with a pencil to get that "sketchy" look. After scanning them in, I adjusted the levels to make the lines slightly darker and set up the animation in Photoshop.
(some photos of the actual index cards before scanning)
I absolutely love both series, and I’m really glad that there is an animated show currently airing with this much heart and creativity in it. You can really tell the people involved love what they do. It would be a dream come true to one day work on a project like this, and I can't wait for the new season of Korra!
P.S. If you don't watch Legend of Korra, then shame on you!
