Avatar: the Last Airbender DVD Commentary: Unaired Pilot

[attackfish]

Commentators: Michael Dante DiMartino, series co-creator and Bryan Konietzko, series co-creator.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Hi this is Mike DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: And this is Bryan Konietzko, the other co-creator. This is the first time Mike and I ever watched this pilot, which was the test animation we made when we developed the series. I think the first time in a couple of years since we’ve seen this.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep

BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this is kind of the precursor to the main title we have now where you see the four elements, and I actually animated these scenes.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh yeah, that’s right, you did.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I did the full animation, all the in betweens. So yeah, this is kind of, this is the low budget version of the main titles. Katara’s dialogue is kind of similar. And that sort of became Pakku-

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: On the water snake in the finale. So you’ll see a lot of differences in this animation from design, costume…

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO and BRYAN KONIETZKO: Names.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Katara’s name is Kya in this.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh that’s right, that’s right, we had to change her name. But you know all the basics are there.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: It had to be, it had to be, it couldn’t be an origin story. The network wanted it to be just kind of be a sample of what the series would be like. So it’s kind of a more basic. Even that shot’s pretty similar to the last one of the main title.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Mmhmm, yeah. [Starts to say something]

BRYAN KONIETZKO: So when Mike and- oh uh, I was just going to say the theme, the actual Avatar theme that Ben and Jeremy did is similar too. Now in this pilot, Ben and Jeremy both did sound design and music. Now with the intense schedule, of the series, they split it up. So that was some early animation from Yu Jae Myung, who does a lot of the episodes now.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Really funny Sokka stuff.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Wow, look at that.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, so obviously the firebender costumes are a lot different.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Even the voices are a little different now that I hear them.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Oh, I did that scene too. So Mike and I, when we got the approval to do this pilot, we went to Korea, and um, interviewed a lot of different studios, and we ended up going with Tin House and JM media, which were two really small studios that just, that had just done a really cool feature film, and um, I don’t know, they just had a cool attitude, and weren’t trying to impress us, they just, they were talented, and um. So I ended up getting an apartment in Seol South Korea and lived there for… Actually I was there almost four months in 2003 for the production of this pilot. Mike came over for several weeks and did a lot of layout. So there’s a lot to accomplish in this pilot, which was you know, get a sense of all the characters personalities…

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: In a really short amount of time, get a you know, sense of the bending that we wanted to do, and the action. So even back then, we were working with Sifu Kisu on the marital arts consultation. It’s a different voice on

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO and BRYAN KONIETZKO: Aang.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yep

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Mitchel Musso. Yeah we recast him later. Oh oh, even in there we see a little Aang/Katara shipping in the pilot. And uh, Aang’s costume is a little different. He had this like asymmetrical fold on his wind pants that no one could draw

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, so…

BRYAN KONIETZKO: So that was the first change I made. And going into the pilot, I knew that a lot of the designs would need to be refined, but it gave us an opportunity to test out some stuff, and you know, obviously some stuff worked well and some things didn’t. Speaking of the designs, I should mention Yoon Young Ki, who is a good friend of ours, and um, he was the animation director on this pilot, and um, amazing animator, and um, he uh he and I kind of brainstormed on these designs when I first got to Korea. He had some good advice. Actually Katara’s like hair loops, the hair loopies, they used to hang down-

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh yeah that’s right

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Just loosely, and Young Ki thought that would be too hard to animate, and uh, thought they’d be moving around too much, so he had the idea to tie them back, which actually ended up being an authentic Inuit hair style. And um, there’s some great Young Ki animation there. And despite that, that we tied them back to make the animation easier, everybody keeps animating wind in all the scenes.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, that’s true, so they keep blowing in the wind.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think I did this scene too.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, that one came out great.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: We put a kookaburra on Aang’s head. We had this idea that Aang was… That nature was just attracted to him since he was the Avatar. Sort of a Huck Finn of the Avatar world. Momo’s eating bugs of Appa right there.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: [Laughs] That’s right. We never… We should do that more often in the series.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: It took a lot of retakes, I remember. And this is Momo as Lassie.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yes.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Hearing trouble

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: *in a southern accent* What do you hear boy?

BRYAN KONIETZKO: So that’s the first… Also when Aang opens his glider, that’s kind of a more detailed thing than we normally show. He’s actually using airbending to kind of open it. Oooh, there’s a cool CG shot there.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: *makes a disapproving noise*

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Well maybe not so cool. I think we had the idea early on that there would be more CG.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Actually there, coming up there’s the most CG shot that we’ve never tried to replicate. I think because I had to hand animate all the frames.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh right.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: That was really difficult. I love that animation of Katara, sliding down the-

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah

BRYAN KONIETZKO: rock hill. This is a great moment where Momo is not paying attention to what people are saying.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That’s right.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Because he just doesn’t understand.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Being an animal.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: So he’s giving her some Kung Fu basics.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: So here we see the serpent’s head, the controversial serpent’s head on the cart. A lot of adults thought this was a dragon car, didn’t make the connection that this is the serpent from the beginning of the episode. It’s only like three minutes earlier, but, eh, we learned a lot.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I just want to point out that my three year old nephew knew where that dragon head came from. Here’s another scene. I animated these scenes. He’s pretty fun. He’s kind of based on my cat. It was kind of like… That was a fun scene to animate.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah it’s a great scene.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I remember just looking on the internet for, I think I searched “cats pawing at things” and studied. This is a cool shot of Zuko just looking out, great layout by Young Ki. He’s really great at posing characters. I really like that detail shot of Zuko’s scar.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I remember spending a lot of time on that. Oh, that’s Dee’s voice.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh yeah, the voice of Dee Baker did that.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: So this idea, which I love, and we tried to replicate in a later episode, but uh, it came from this hilarious layout that Young Ki did.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh yeah, that’s right.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Where Aang had this demonic happy expression on his face, and we were like, oh yeah, we have to do a freeze frame.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I like those spears. Why didn’t I use those spears in the series? Those are nice. So they fall like fifty feet into this metal hole.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: The scaffolding came out really nice.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah. No this is a great… I always love this action sequence, some good Momo stuff.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: That was one of our earliest ideas, Momo flipping down.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Oh right, and Momo’s nemesis, the hawk.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: That’s some tantui, it’s one of the basic northern Shaolin forms. Oh that was some, oh forget it.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That was Bryan’s voice.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Horrible voice acting. Yeah, it’s funny, little pieces of this pilot have made their way into the series in various ways, so. Ideas.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: You’ll see this… you’ll see some stuff like this later in season two.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, 2.03. But yeah, I love the idea of them fighting on…

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I like the fire came right from camera. Great animation by Young Ki there. It’s almost like I’m seeing this for the first time.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I know, right? Okay here is some crazy. So yeah, all of that fire I had to kind of animate by hand over the top of this 3D animation.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I don’t think we’ve ever done a shot like this in the actual series. Probably because we learned our lesson from this.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: This is pretty funny.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, this is classic early Momo, chowing down. I like how he’s just drinking a little soup at the end. Yeah, even in this early pilot, we tried to balance the action and the comedy stuff, and find moments for both.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: So the fight, we did it in three stages, sort of, on the scaffolding, and then on this dilapidated scaffolding, where they had really nowhere to stand, and then the third stage is up on the head of this huge avatar statue. Which the concept is that they are retrofitting it to become Zuko’s father, the Firelord. The fire daggers, which don’t show up that much in the series, but are pretty prevalent here.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: What was that?

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I think that waterbending theme might have made it into the series.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, yeah, we definitely hear that in the first episode, I think.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Jeremy's uh theme there. This is one of the first times Jack DeSena just went off improvising and now we know we can just trust him to come up with some funny stuff.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Well, that’s uh...

BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s Ben’s voice. That little woooooooop is Ben’s voice. So yeah, this is fun, I think. Spent a lot of time on this when I was in Korea, this single layout for this sequence. Aang kind of using his bagua more, spiraling circular footwork. Zuko does a dragon’s tail kick here, I like this, to kind of close him off. He realizes he has to box him in. That was a fun layout. I like the little fire highlights in his eyes. I love the sparkles. Those came out really good. So this is not something we really did in the series, where Aang throws himself into danger to put himself into the Avatar state.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Well definitely the Avatar state became a much more complex device in the show. It’s not just the simple power up thing that he did here.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: I like this. I do like the timing on that kick, the arc of wind that he sends out. That’s a cool power. So Aang’s nice enough to save his foe and-

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: He just drops him.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Maybe he killed his bird there and that’s why he didn’t make it into the show.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: I think it’s alive. It shows up in episode thirteen. I think the idea we had in the series was that they were more like homing pigeons. Their work was more specific like.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: This is straight from some of the development work, that shot. I never know why, but people laugh at that little Katara slipping there. Yeah, he’s alive.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Yeah, forgot about that, he is alive.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Alive and well. I like that, that shot’s cool. That was another shot straight out of our development work.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: That one too, actually.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: This little kalimba, the kalimba music makes it into the main series too

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: Appa’s head’s really small. Here you go, wow, blast from the past So that was never before seen on DVD I guess.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: Yeah, we showed it at a convention, a couple conventions I think. But as different as it is, and a little rough around the edges, there’s still a lot of great moments, and a lot of people worked really hard. I mean it was, the crew is so small on a pilot, and it’s almost just as much work as doing the series.

MICHAEL DANTE DIMARTINO: We did that over almost a year and then, and now we do a whole season now in a little over a year, so.

BRYAN KONIETZKO: It’s crazy.