We wanted the elemental 'bending' to be based on authentic Chinese traditional martial arts, believing this would lend a beauty and resonance to the animation and the fictitious disciplines. Once we had that idea, I started looking for a Kung Fu teacher/Martial Arts consultant. My search led me to Sifu Kisu and I began training with him right away.
As humans our hangups seem to shape our interaction with the world around us. They are often the source of our intolerance and friction with people who think differently than us, and even the reason we build walls between us and the people close to us.
Mike and I were really interested in other epic 'Legends & Lore' properties, like 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings,' but we knew that we wanted to take a different approach to that type of genre. Our love for Japanese Anime, Hong Kong action & Kung Fu cinema, yoga, and Eastern philosophies led us to the initial inspiration for 'Avatar.'
I always felt like Azula and Long Feng were much more interesting villains and three-dimensional characters than Ozai, who was just sort of a big jerk. Like a really big jerk, but not very complex or human.
Nickelodeon came to us at the end of 2009 with a twelve episode 'mini-season' already green-lit for a new series. They let us do pretty much whatever we wanted with it, as long as it was in the 'Avatar' universe and featured bending.
I think it's touching that the fans feel so close to the characters that they feel personally hurt. I've felt that way in plenty of TV shows - 'Game of Thrones,' 'Mad Men.' How could they do that to that character? That's drama.
We knew we wanted the 'magic' in our show to be different than the typical wand-wielding spell-casting fare. For us, it had to be natural and physical, with a source and rules and limitations - and most importantly it had to be a skill rather than just a power, something that a practitioner had to learn and strive for.
The social and political climate came from discussions about how we could find conflict in the wake of a 100-year-long war ending. But as we know in the real world, just because a war ends it doesn't mean that everything turns happy and peaceful. That provided us with some new kinds of conflict for us to explore in 'Korra.'
I thought Korra was 17 so Mike and I have to get our stories straight. The main characters are in their late teens, we've always loved those kind of teen love triangle type stories and there was plenty of that in the original series.
We just don't subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can't have an action series led by a female character. It's kinda nonsense to us.
I'll just say that America - us included - has a long way to go to catch up with the animated work being done in a handful of countries, namely Japan.