The Legend of Korra cast and crew attended NYCC, including the season 2 guest star from The Walking Dead who voices the first ever Avatar! Read our full recap of the panel.
Related: Recap of The Legend of Korra season 2, episode 7 “Beginnings, Part 1.”
The Legend of Korra panel opened up with the introduction of Steven Yuen as the original Avatar, and a sneak peek at next week’s episode.
The first notable thing about episode 2×07 “Beginnings, Part 1” was the use of different artwork styles. They incorporated Chinese ink wash and Japanese woodblock styles that were specifically created for this origin story. Series co-creator Bryan Konietzko says this episode was very inspired by the film Spirited Away.
The voice of Korra, Janet Varney, spoke about some of the things that she loves about the fans of Korra. “I love the fanart. I’m blown away by what is being created.”
Varney also spoke about how playing Korra has compeletely changed her life. “The most magical thing that has happened to me has been through Korra and I didn’t expect that.”
The voice actress is currently working on recording book four, and sometimes gets confused when people ask her what she thinks about where Korra is at.
Voice actor for Bolin, P.J. Byrne, was asked about the Eska and Bolin relationship. He responded candidly by saying “I think my [real-life] wife loves the relationship and the power women have over me [as Bolin]. Bolin is in an unhealthy relationship, and I hope to be out of it soon but we don’t know.”
After the first half of the panel, the cast sat in the audience to watch episode 2×06 “Beginnings, Part 1” with the fans.
Voice actor for Wan, the first Avatar, Steve Yeun says that he can’t watch The Walking Dead with other people, never mind sit in a room with thousands of people.
Steven was familiar with Korra before he auditioned, and was really excited to join the cast. “You guys set up something so cool, and I kept thinking, ‘how I am going to mess this up?’ It is a family show in terms of you guys getting together and collaborating, and you can see that in the product.”
Series co-creator Bryan Koneitzko and series director Joaquim Dos Santos took the audience on an exclusive behind the scenes look at what it takes to create just one scene from an episode.
The clip they used to illustrate this process was from episode 10 of this season. Koneitzko explained that the process starts with writing a premise of the episode, which then tuns into the outline and the script.
Before anything is drawn, the dialogue is recorded. Often times, the actors aren’t even together to do the recordings.
The production then takes the script and begins designing the props, backgrounds and characters. The drawings can take days to design, even though a given character may only be in one scene.
Storyboards are an intense and a serious process for the show. There are often several steps in the storyboard process.
The storyboards are then synced up with the voice recordings. Once everything is synced, they then color the boards, and add any notes of how things should look.
From there, they make image boards to set the lighting. Everything is sent to the animation studio, that then fleshes everything out completely, and adds perspective to the background.
The average episode of The Legend of Korra has 15,000 drawings. Once they get the animation back, it goes to the sound design and foley artist to create the sounds in the scenes.
Nearing completion, it goes to series composer Jeremy Zuckerman, who adds in the music. From there, everything is mixed and color corrected to create the final product you see on TV.
The audience loved the behind the scenes look; when Koneitzko jokingly said people shouldn’t complain when it takes them so long, several people yelled sorry.
The Legend of Korra season 2 airs on Nickelodeon on Friday nights at 8:30pm EST.
The Legend of Korra season 2, episode 7 “Beginnings, Part 1” and season 2, episode 8 “Beginnings, Part 2” will air back-to-back at 8:00pm EST next Friday. They will be followed by a brief hiatus, which ends 1 November.
Additional reporting: Mitchel Clow
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