Avatar: The Last Airbender

Even my dad liked this show, and that man hates everything.

If there is one quality animation series that will continue to be praised over the coming years, it is this series. Known for its near-to-flawless storytelling and character development, art direction, music and of course animation, this series has been hailed by the majority of the world as an animation masterpiece in its own right (It might sound like I'm being bias and am exaggerating 'a little' but no, this show was that good).

The series is especially well known for borrowing extensively from East Asian art and mythology in the creation of its universe, such influences include Chinese art and history, Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism, and even Yoga. A variety of traditional chinese calligraphy styles are used for most of the writing shown in the series, ranging from seal script to clerical script. Consultants were also employed for the series' cultural influences (If you want to get it done right, go all out and hire cultural experts)

Initially, it is no surprise that this show was also inspirited from the creators' love of Japanese animation (While there are notable influences, this show is NOT considered an anime), Hong Kong action, kung fu cinema, yoga and Eastern philosophies.

Air Nomads - The Monasteries of Tibet

Water Tribe - The Inuit

Earth Kingdom - Imperial China

Fire Nation - Pre-Meiji Japan

But it is not the art direction in which we are looking at in this blog post, instead, we will be focusing more on the human form and its movements, and so let us move on…

Seeing as the show is considered to be of the fantasy martial arts genre, it is no surprise that a lot of research was put into the characters' fighting styles. Much like the experts that were hired for the cultural aspects of the show, a martial artist expert was also hired during the development of the fighting styles seen throughout the show. A huge variety of stances and movements were used for each character animation, which probably sounds pretty complicated (Aside from character designs, each one had their own unique movements, so that are twice as much details to make note of when animating) but nonetheless worthwhile, especially when such an awe-inspiring piece of work is produced from it all.

The characters have always managed to stay realistically drawn and anatomically accurate, which comes as another surprise since animators tend to take the opportunity to exaggerate (Even deform) their characters more during action sequences, and another surprise is that how the impact can nonetheless still be brought out in these characters' movements and strikes, which I find to be quite challenging without the use of some exaggerating.

And there is most definitely a notable difference between each style used when it comes to the amount of weight and speed put into their movements (Such as the water benders being more graceful in contrast to the earth benders, that are more rooted to the ground and more firm with their strikes).

And as a bonus trivia, while each elemental group was given a distinct fighting style, Toph Bei Fong (Known to be the most powerful earth bender in the series) was the only exception, being given her own unique fighting style to set her apart from the other earth benders, while their fighting style is based on the Hung Gar fighting style, Toph's is based more on the Southern Praying Mantis style which was developed during the Han dynasty.

Below you will see the fighting styles that were associated with each element in the show, badass, I know:

Many animations I have watched with quality character animation have always used references, so it pretty much shows that taking the time to get some proper research and referencing done will be worthwhile if you want to create something as amazing as this, don't you ever take live-action referencing for granted.

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