![]() ![]() In terms of the martial arts selected, Kisu opted to use styles he had the most respect for. “If you’ve seen the Hong Kong movies, the fight scenes are really involved, but if you look at an American or European production, it pales in comparison.” He notes that, especially in America, applying this type of time to martial arts alone is unheard of, and is how the team ended up pushing the boundaries of what was possible. “We took a lot of time for the martial arts,” Kisu says. Sometimes there was a fourth, just to really put the icing on the cake. The first discussion would always focus on intent the second workshopped movements that made sense to the scripts and the third was when the filming took place. Kisu would meet the animation team three or four times per episode in order to be as imaginative as possible. #Pencil animation fight seriesThe creators of The Legend of Korra look back at the prescient series How Avatar: The Last Airbender stood the test of time “I had never been involved in anything like it.” “I think we ended up pushing the boundaries between 2D and 3D,” he says. In Kisu’s eyes, the (unaired, but recently released) pilot they designed was “weak sauce” compared to what the show ended up accomplishing. Once things started to come together, the team designed a pencil test, a low-grade rendering of the animation. Kisu says Tai Chi and water were a perfect fit. ![]() Kisu notes that his teacher - who he has been with for over 40 years - maintains a vast curriculum, and as a result, he was able to pair styles he had expertise in with elements that heavily resonated with them. Connecting these elements to martial arts involved a deep understanding of the body. “Originally, bending was gonna be lumped into this one big category of martial arts manifestation that created rocks flying or fire coming out of hands,” Kisu says. Kisu would advise on how that could be visualized: the breath, stance, preparatory movement, executionary movement, manifestation of the element, and subsequent decline to pull the whole cycle back into a natural position. ![]() For every “Zuko shoots a fireball” in a script, there were smaller moments, like Aang moving water from a table to a glass. “But the best writers are smart enough not to try to write action,” he says with a laugh.īending quickly became more than a form of combat. Creatives on the show would forward him scripts, and he would innovate on the staff’s action scenes. Kisu and the team began to work together in an extremely collaborative process. “So Avatar kind of started in my backyard.” Image: Nickelodeon “It was some of the most amazing artwork I had ever seen in my life,” he says. It wasn’t until Konietzko finally showed him some of the drawings he had that Kisu decided this was a project worth working on. Then he turned him down several times afterward. “It’s very catty, it’s very backstabbing.” According to Kisu, being a stunt player in Hollywood isn’t easy. So how did this lead to Avatar? “, I was teaching in the backyard of my house in LA, and one of the creators, Bryan Konietzko, was one of my students.” Despite Konietzko’s attempts to get Kisu on board with the project, he was done with the entertainment business after working as a stunt player on shows like Power Rangers and BeetleBorgs. “I’ve been his student ever since, even though I have two generations of my own students,” Kisu explains. In his early 20s, however, he encountered his current teacher, Kenneth Hui, and fell in love with Northern Shaolin. He needed to do that.įrom training with family friends to practicing Taekwondo at the marine station in Kāneʻohe Bay in Hawaii, Kisu spent years mastering the martial arts. “They’d gone off to the military and learned Judo, so they came back and were throwing each other around the apartment.” At around the same time, Bruce Lee secured a role as Kato on The Green Hornet. “I started martial arts when I was seven or eight years old with my crazy uncles,” Kisu tells Polygon. The styles featured in the series were coordinated by Sifu Kisu, a practitioner of fighting styles and the show’s martial arts consultant. But as time passes, and the Nickelodeon series becomes more ubiquitous, few may realize how much work went into its development - particularly in its treatment of the martial arts. Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the most beloved animated shows of the 21st century. ![]()
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