[grunting]
[air whooshing]
Narrator: These behind-the-scene clips
are what's known as reference footage.
Reference footage is used in animation all the time
to make sure animated characters' movements,
like walking and jumping, are realistic.
Probably the most difficult scenes to animate
are fight scenes,
like the extremely complex head-to-heads
in "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and "The Legend of Korra."
Animator: Instead of just going on the ground on his butt,
he actually drops down, and he's like,
[blows] on his finger. There's, like, air.
You know, there's, like, wind.
Narrator: To animate them meant finding someone
who could perform and choreograph
multiple martial arts styles.
Sifu Kisu: It was fun.
I was the only person on the planet with my job
for a hot minute.
Narrator: That's Sifu Kisu, a master of martial arts
and the fight choreographer and reference actor
for "Avatar: The Last Airbender."
Kisu has over 40 years of experience in martial arts
and has studied tae kwon do, karate, jujitsu,
Northern Shaolin-style kung fu, and more.
Kisu worked on all 61 episodes of "Avatar"
and collaborated with a team
of martial arts experts on "Korra."
In "Avatar," having a choreographer
and reference actor was especially important
because the four kingdoms used different fighting styles
with their own specific movements.
Kisu based each distinct bending style
on a different martial art.
The fluid movements of waterbending are based on tai chi,
the spinning movements of airbending are taken from bagua,
the powerful movements of firebending
are based on Northern Shaolin-style kung fu,
and the sturdy, low-center-of-gravity movements
of earthbending are based on hung ga.
The first step in creating these animated fight sequences
is storyboarding, when the artists receive a script
and draw rough sketches of an entire episode.
The descriptions of fight scenes in scripts
typically only include the broad strokes of the fight,
so the director of the episode
will often create the temporary choreography
during this initial phase.
Giancarlo Volpe: When we got to the actual fighting,
you know, who kicks, who punches,
who was the aggressor and all that,
oftentimes I do something like this,
where it's like, "Aang shoots air,"
and I'll just do this or something.
Do a drawing that looks like that.
Narrator: After storyboarding comes choreography,
where Kisu met with the animation team
to refine the choreography of the fight scenes.
There were usually about five to 10 fight scenes
per episode that had to be choreographed.
Kisu says that in this first meeting,
he would just pitch a series of movements
that he thought would represent a certain type of bending.
For example, Kisu said that if a firebending technique
called for swinging, flaming fists,
he would suggest an appropriate movement,
such as striking motions from double dagger form kung fu.
Other animated shows have tried to mix magic
and martial arts, but Kisu noted
that they don't often use martial arts movements
when conjuring magic.
You can see this when comparing "Avatar: The Last Airbender"
to other shows featuring supernatural powers,
like some scenes from "Dragon Ball Z."
Kisu: It's like, if I'm holding a stone in my hand like this
and it jumps out of my hand and hits the camera,
you're going to question that, right?
But if I wind up and I make the motion
and the antic of throwing that,
then that's going to read more
to something you can understand, right?
But we thought that that would be important,
that it should come from somewhere
to go to somewhere.
And I think that was one of the big
contributing factors to the success
of "Avatar: The Last Airbender."
Narrator: After Kisu and the director
agreed on the choreography, they filmed the action.
Kisu sometimes performed the fight choreography
for two or more fighting characters separately.
Animators would later take these shots
and combine them into a single fight between characters.
After filming, the artists took the footage
and used it to add more detail,
like specific poses, to their initial storyboards.
The time it cost to do the reference filming
was recouped by having
an extremely accurate model for drawing.
Ultimately, this led to a better final product,
because the character poses were more accurate.
The storyboard team sent the polished storyboards
back to Kisu for review.
Volpe: Then it'd be sort of a back and forth where, like,
maybe we come up with a new shot
that we never talked about during the first meeting.
Narrator: This process was repeated two to three times
until everyone was satisfied with the result.
Before sending the finished storyboards
off to a team in Korea for the final animation,
the director would film one final version of the fight
with Kisu with all of the finalized camera angles.
Kisu: If it was going to be a wide angle,
we had these bleachers that were in, like,
a little makeshift basketball court at Nickelodeon,
and guys would crawl up there with the camera
and get a down shot.
We'd change to a wide angle
and make it look like it was really far away.
Like, the fight with Zuko and Azula on the boat dock,
where she tried to scratch his face
and they had a fire battle,
that was done on the front steps at Nickelodeon
in front of the SpongeBob statue.
Narrator: Storyboards aren't created for every frame.
They're created for every third frame of animation,
so the reference footage made it easier for the animators
to create the in-between frames that were missing.
While having reference footage is ideal,
sometimes it was impossible to capture accurate
live-action reference footage,
mostly because the characters possess magical powers.
Some fights in the show called for a movement
that no real human could replicate,
like this scene from "Korra."
In these situations,
the martial artists would split up the action
into several chunks,
which would be stitched together in the final animation.
Kisu: In the beginning credits
for "Avatar: The Last Airbender," when Zuko would do
the big whirlwind kick with the flame
and he'd come down and hit the ground,
at the time, I was recovering from an injury,
and so I couldn't do that kick.
We call it a one-legged whirlwind kick.
And so I'm literally rolled over someone's back,
like, someone bent over,
and then I just rolled over that person's back.
The opening credits for "Korra,"
they show, the airbender does this crazy thing
where he kicks this way and lays back that way.
I ended up just holding Brian in my arms,
which is really funny.
Narrator: It's this lifelike martial arts
choreography and attention to detail
that make the difference between
static fight scenes, like this,
and dynamic ones, like this.