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Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko's animated series convincingly broke Nickelodeon's dudebro mold. Will they be the last?

At the Dark Horse: CLASSIFIED! panel this afternoon at New York Comic-Con, a series of brand new licensed comics including new material from Aliens, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and The Legend of Korra was announced. The brand new Aliens comic is entitled Aliens: Defiance with writing from Brian Wood (Star Wars) and art from Tristan Jones (Mad […]

  The Legend of Korra, Nickelodeon’s four season follow up to the beloved Avatar: the Last Airbender, is receiving a full series DVD box set.  It was recently announced that Avatar would also finally be collected as a 16 DVD complete series box set this fall, so this move comes as little surprise. No release date was assigned […]

Viacom, the parent company of Nick, MTV, and Comedy Central, insists it's still relevant. No one else thinks so.

At the end of The Legend of Korra, showrunners Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko implied, and then took to their blogs to confirm, that Avatar Korra and Asami Sato were more than just friends.  And thus, millions of ships finally reached land.

Today, Dark Horse announced that Korra and Asami’s story would continue in a new series of The Legend of Korra comics, to be written by DiMartino.  It looks like they haven’t found an artist yet, but when they do, here’s hoping he or she recreates this bit of fanart:

LIke his fellow 'Avatar' co-creator, Michael DiMartino is entering the world of publishing.

Hurry up and wait, benders! Bryan Konietzo's debut graphic novel series arrives in 2017.

Cut through the clutter with our handy guide to the must-see animation events happening in San Diego this year.

Nickelodeon unveiled the revamped Nick.com today, and as part of the new site, they offered a 90-second first-look at "Welcome to the Wayne," which is their first animated series made exclusively for digital platforms like the Nick App.

In a first-of-its-kind programming move that even surprised the show's creators, Nickelodeon will remove "The Legend of Korra" from its network schedule, and premiere the remaining episodes of season three exclusively on digital platforms.

The Legend of Korra returns to Nickelodeon with a new season this Friday, September 13, at 7pm (ET/PT). While the new season trailer is action-fueled drama (with a glimpse of the first Avatar Wan), we’ve got an exclusive clip featuring Bolin in a lighter moment from the upcoming season:

Korra’s second season, titled Book 2: “Spirits,” takes place six months after the end of Book 1:

Korra has rid Republic City of Amon and the Equalists, but now she must take on an even larger threat as the physical and spirit worlds collide. During the one-hour premiere, “Rebel Spirit/The Southern Lights,” Korra struggles to find a deeper connection with the Spirit World as she and the gang attend a Southern Water Tribe festival. Then, Korra and Chief Unalaq journey into a dangerous maelstrom and find a source of great spiritual power.

The Legend of Korra is co-created by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, who also created Avatar: The Last Airbender, and exec produced by DiMartino, Konietzko and Joaquim Dos Santos.

Nickelodeon has rolled out a new set of promos for their upcoming slate of animated shows in a series of behind-the-scenes clips embedded in their Nick Studio 10 pre-teen programming block. Here, viewers are introduced to new series like Breadwinners and Rabbids Invasion, and reacquainted with returning players like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Monsters Vs. Aliens, Sanjay and Craig and The Legend of Korra.

In the Nick Studio 10 spots, a pair of hyperactive tweens scramble from one studio cubicle to another to chew the scenery with unidentified mononymous animation “experts” with names like “Bret”, “Ciro” and “Claudia”. The entire experience results in a headache-inducing panderfest that is desperately trying to connect to its youthful demographic.

The direction of this presentation style is the polar opposite of Cartoon Network’s recent profiling of their upcoming slate of auteur-driven, character-based properties from smart, hipster-ish millenials. While CN is at least making an attempt to shine a light on nurturing bright ideas from the next generation of talent, Nick hopes to distract from rebooted ideas and threadbare concepts with quick cuts, dubstepping ducks and rectally-focused gags that take the form of toilet plungers, cow farts and “butt kicks.”

Ultimately, Nickelodeon would be hard pressed to sell this collection of spinoffs, adaptations and desperate grabs in a sincere, straightforward way. When placed alongside CN shows like Steven Universe or Uncle Grandpa, something like Rabbids Invasion, which began as a manic, unintelligible video game, has trouble competing.

Nick management continues to wallow in its inability to find a clear creative path that distinguishes itself from its competitors. These dips in quality are cyclical in TV animation—just a few years Cartoon Network was in the same position—but Nick’s stumbles have been a ongoing concern for over a decade. These promos serve as an outward reflection of the network’s inability to come up with shows that connect with their audience, and explains better than anything why the entire network subsists on the back of a single decade-and-a-half old, as seen in the network’s recent ratings:

LeSean Thomas’s path as an artist has taken him from the South Bronx, to Los Angeles, to Seoul, and back to Los Angeles again. Starting out self-taught in the late ’90s, he worked on the first regular Flash animated series on the web, WhirlGirl, as designer, storyboard and layout artist. Since then, he’s worked on shows such as The Boondocks, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, The Legend of Korra, and Black Dynamite, the latter for which he is supervising director.

His thirst for understanding the production process from start to finish drove him to take the drastic step of moving to Korea to work directly in a studio there that services the U.S. animation industry. He describes more about this in a documentary series, The Seoul Sessions, and his TEDxSinchon talk here:

He has a blog and website where you can find more production drawings, sketches and his self-published sketchbook collections.

The Korean studio responsible for the animation production of The Legend of Korra is Studio Mir. The young studio was launched by Jae Myung Yoo, who was an animation director on Avatar: The Last Airbender. The studio’s other recent projects include season four of The Boondocks and an animated sequence in the recent live-action film Think Like a Man. Historically, Korean service studios have been content to remain anonymous, but Studio MIR represents the new young breed of foreign animation studios that make an effort to connect with the public and interact with fans. They have an active Facebook fan page, and offer glimpses inside their studio, such as in the video above. MIR has plenty of reason to be proud of their work on Korra since they also did some of the show’s pre-production work, in addition to the animation production.

They’re also posting small samples of pencil animation, like this Korra scene by key animation director Jung Hye Young…

and this piece by key animation director In Seung Choi…

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Jae Myung Yoo, Korea, Studio MIR, The Boondocks, The Legend of Korra, Think Like a Man

The second third episode of Nickelodeon’s new Avatar spin-off The Legend of Korra aired this morning. The show was creaed by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. If you’ve been watching, share your thoughts on the first few episodes.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 5 comments | Post tags: Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartino, nickelodeon, The Legend of Korra