They did. They talk about original ideas for the show, original art, background ideas, what the creators were working on before Avatar and how they came to do Avatar (also the interesting story on how restraints from the network forced them into making Avatar into what it is), storyboard art, the images of specific martial artists they worked with that posed for reference, and images/information about the calligrapher they hired to help with the world's writing system, among a lot more. I might have bought and read this book a million times.

Or you can just buy it off amazon for 19 dollars.

http://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Last-Airbender-Animated-Series/dp/1595825045

Adding to this bit by HeirToPendragon:

> The Lost Adventures is a collection of official comics from the series that were put in various other places (like Nick Mag). A few tell stories about what happened between seasons.

"The Lost Adventures" also includes the comics that were bundled with the DVD releases (of the non-boxed set variety), like the "Private Fire" comic which came with the Season 3 DVDs. Also, the comics collected in this book are grouped by season, which helps if you want to read them in the chronological order of the show. "The Lost Adventures" is a pretty good collection since it incudes so many comics (it is 240 pages long) and it spans all three seasons of the show, so if you only get one book to start with, this is the one to get.

The four "Lost Scrolls" books (Water, Earth, Fire, Air; alternatively, I think this one book collects all four) include some background information about the four nations in the world of Avatar as well as some first-person stories from Season 1 (basically, some episodes told from the perspective of some of the characters).

The "Earth Kingdom Chronicles" (titles start with "The Tale of [insert character name here]", available for Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, Azula, Zuko; I think this one collects some but not all of them) are similar, but for Season 2 and they don't include background info, just first-person perspectives of the episodes. Basically, you follow the individual characters through Season 2.

There's also three little comics set during Season 3 ("Aang's School Days", "Sokka the Sword Master", and "Love Potion #8"). I've heard these aren't that good, but they exist so I'm mentioning them.

"Sozin's Comet" is a novelization of the series finale (the four "Sozin's Comet" episodes).

The new comics, starting with "The Promise, Part 1", are set after the end of Season 3, and those will start coming out early next year.

If you want to read all these Avatar books more or less in chronological order, you'd start with "The Lost Scrolls", then continue with the Season 1 comics in "The Lost Adventures", move on to the "Earth Kingdom Chronicles", then the Season 2 comics in "The Lost Adventures", then the three short Season 3 comics, then the Season 3 comics in "The Lost Adventures", then the "Sozin's Comet" book, then "The Promise" and all that comes after.

And, of course, there's also The Art of the Animated Series, but that's not a graphic novel and would be more for you or for your son when he's older. =)

Edited to add links.

Although it's not a comic, you might wanna check out Avatar: The Last Airbender (The Art of the Animated Series) too. It's a gorgeous artbook.

Oh man do I have a list for you!

Joe Murray's Creating Animated Cartoons with Character is an amazing read and he gives some information on the creation process for his shows.

Nancy Beiman's Prepare to Board! talks about story development and character creation, but she mostly covers storyboarding in the book. Beiman also has exercises included as you read, so it feels a bit more interactive.

Jean Ann Wright's Animation Writing and Development covers writing for TV animation. Wright talks mainly about how to land a job as a writer for an ongoing show, but he does cover character in the book.

Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino's Avatar: The Last Airbender (The Art of the Animated Series) talks a bit on character creation for the show and how the show kept evolving until they finally arrived at Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But you shouldn't just stay with finding books on how to create characters for animation. It shouldn't matter if they are animated or not, we need to believe in these characters!

Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing
is my personal favorite on character development. Although this book is mainly about writing a play, Egri covers dialogue, characters, character motivation, and story development perfectly. I keep returning to this book everytime an idea pops into my head. I cannot express how much this book has helped me in creating believable characters and conflicts.

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! is a book I have never gotten around to reading, but I feel it worth mentioning as most of my colleagues and friends keep recommending this book back to me.

And again, although you will learn many new things from these books and they will help you view stories and characters more analytically, you won't get better until you start to create more and more characters and stories. You may also start looking for interviews of your favorite creators and look for what they have to say about character.

Hope this helps!

Here:

Avatar: The Last Airbender#The Art of the Animated Series

Do you have a source? I just don't believe this is true, that's not how television production works. Bryan and Mike had an overall arc with a few major events when they pitched the show, but then had a team of ~20 writers and managed working with 3 animation companies. You don't simply knock out all the writing before working on anything else...

Someone who's read this book might know more, but I haven't read it: https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Last-Airbender-Art-Animated/dp/1595825045/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278596593&sr=8-1

ATLA Book 1-3, LOK B1, LOK B2, LOK B3.

LOK B4 isn't out yet.

I totally agree with you on the animation ones! My personal favorite is Avatar: The Art of the Animated Series!

I have never heard of those field guides and am excited to check them out. A personal little dream of mine is to one day produce a field guide for one of my favorite video games.

Ooo I've always wanted to go as a super tall Ent/tree creature!

I've had it planned out in my head forever lol. I'd get some stilts, probably about 5-6ft, and collect a ton of twigs and branches and bark. I'd glue and sew and staple and tape all the sticks and leaves to the costume so it looked legitimately like a tree. Then I'd do some killer face makeup like the guy in The Hunger Games did lol. Lastly, I'd stand in my yard very still and wait for tiny children to walk by on the way to the door. Then I'm "come to life" and scare and amaze them!

I'd love this beautiful Avatar: The Last Airbender hardcover art book!

Thanks for the contest!

If you had a chance to check out the Art of the Animated Series, they even have an image of the early image of Naga. They even explained how off base their initial ideas were. The linked provided has a preview of the book, you can click on it to read that section and view the bi-pedal Naga.

I'm not positive either, but I listed all the ATLA books that I know of below. Some aren't comics, but I'm not sure if you're just referring to the Gene Luen Yang collab comics or the others as well.

Post A:TLA Universe Comics: By Gene Luen Yang

The Promise

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Search

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Rift

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3


Artwork and Development

These aren't comics, but I added them because they're awesome.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, Art of the Animated Series

The Legend of Korra: The Art of the Animated Series Book One - Air

Legend of Korra: The Art of the Animated Series Book Two

Other Comics

The Lost Adventures

There are also The Earth Kingdom Chronicles series, The Lost Scrolls Collection and The Tale of Aang/Zuko, but I'm not sure if they're canon (I am guessing they are since there's a Nickelodeon logo on them, but the original creators/writers aren't listed among the author so I don't know).

I highly recommend getting this book to anyone who finds this kind of stuff interesting.

Yeah, the arrow definitely came before the airbending. It's all in The Art of the Animated Series.

Here's the original scanned as a PDF. If you need it in other formats, the free graphic program GIMP is able to open and manipulate it however you'd like.

I also did this one as a PNG to make the background transparent and add a slight Gaussian blur to account for the printer spots in the original.

By the way, I cannot recommend highly enough the Avatar: The Art of the Animated Series book this comes from. It's only $19 for 200 pages of concept art, which I think is a pretty good deal.

For those of you interested in seeing more, I suggest purchasing this book from amazon. It's really amazing

This one.

I actually got it from my reddit secret Santa and it's awesome.

> would start with the artbook and move on from there. It's filled with great stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Last-Airbender-Animated-Series/dp/1595825045 this book shows how they drew the things

I think Nick might be holding onto them for the time being.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (The Art of the Animated Series), the next best thing if you haven't seen it already.

Make sure you get the art book. It has a ton of these details for the whole series. And you'll be able to cite it!

I agree with this. The problem with most "How to Draw" book that are geared towards kids is that they teach a process that is too specific to get a result that is too specific.
A more productive approach is probably to buy him some cool art books of things that are visually interesting to him. There are artbooks for all the most popular movies, video games, cartoons... whatever he is into, there's probably an artbook for it.

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Comment (1pts) in TheLastAirbender, "My friends book! “The Art of the Animated Series”", (10 Sep 19):

> I have this exact book, I bought it from Barnes and Noble but I’ve also seen it on amazon. [[Link]](https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Last-Airbender-Art-Animated/dp/1595825045/ref=asc_df_1595825045_nodl/?...





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This one!

I'm assuming it's the ATLA art book (Art of the Animated Series)
https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Last-Airbender-Art-Animated/dp/1595825045/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=last+airbender+art+book&qid=1550273949&s=gateway&sr=8-5


I don't personally have this one, but I have all four of LoK's art book and the style and presentation is pretty much the same as the image posted here.

No. Avatar began as a doodle Bryan Konietzko drew in his spare time and was expanded in meetings with Nickelodeon executives about what they wanted in a new childrens show. A great recap of the story behind the show can be read in the book about it.