Comics Alliance Interview with Mike & Me

April 13, 2012

And yet another! Here’s an article by Caleb Goellner for Comicsalliance.com. Sorry for my sloppy answers in this. I wrote them in a jet lag-induced haze. I guess that’s one of the nice things about keeping a blog: I can (attempt to) clarify a few points ex post facto, in brackets bellow:

ComicsAlliance: Like all major animated productions, The Legend of Korra required some serious lead time, which in turn required you to keep a lot of secrets for a long, long time. How does it feel to be able to finally discuss the series openly?

Konietzko: It was a little different this time around, compared to making Avatar: The Last Airbender. [Avatar] was a new idea and we were new show creators, so for the three years between its creation and the series premiere we were pretty much left alone to work on the show. Once it came out and thankfully garnered a rabid following, we were already pretty deep into production and we had finished episodes to air to give the audience something to chew on fairly regularly. With The Legend of Korra, it is an entirely different situation. People have been digging for answers, using automated search engines to find out what show titles were registered, speculating about production delays, coming up with conspiracies, stealing an episode from a licensee and leaking it on the internet, and on and on. It is all pretty overwhelming, but we are thankful to have a show that so many people want to see that badly. Fans are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of Book 1 now, and we are deep into production on Book 2, so there are still plenty of secrets we have to guard in the night!

CA: You’ve cited Hayao Miyazaki and a few others as major inspirations for The Last Airbender. Were there any new or unexpected creators who inspired you while working on The Legend of Korra?

Konietzko: We draw inspiration directly and indirectly from all sorts of things, like movies, documentaries, TV dramas, novels, non-fiction books, animation, science and nature shows, and our own life experiences. After Avatarended, I spent a lot of time watching MMA and kickboxing fights on UFC, WEC, DREAM, and K-1. All of those hours [of watching] fed into the Pro Bending concept, which became a big part of Book 1.

(There’s a lot more to the article if you click the link here or above.)

5:45pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMz7zvJcJN8U

(Notes: 200)