Quotes from Bryan Konietzko

We don't dwell on the business of Korra restoring everyone's bending in 'Book 2,' but we figured she got around to helping the innocent people who lost it in the months between the seasons.

Mike and I were really interested in other epic 'Legends & Lore' properties, like 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings,' but we knew that we wanted to take a different approach to that type of genre. Our love for Japanese Anime, Hong Kong action & Kung Fu cinema, yoga, and Eastern philosophies led us to the initial inspiration for 'Avatar.'

I thought Korra was 17 so Mike and I have to get our stories straight. The main characters are in their late teens, we've always loved those kind of teen love triangle type stories and there was plenty of that in the original series.

We wanted the elemental 'bending' to be based on authentic Chinese traditional martial arts, believing this would lend a beauty and resonance to the animation and the fictitious disciplines. Once we had that idea, I started looking for a Kung Fu teacher/Martial Arts consultant. My search led me to Sifu Kisu and I began training with him right away.

I am certainly proud to add 'Korra' to the pantheon of TV characters, which is perpetually sorely lacking in multifaceted female characters who aren't sidekicks, subordinates or mere trophies for male characters.

'Avatar' means so many things to so many different people. When I think of the creation of it, I think of me and Mike at the computer in a little apartment in Burbank.

I think Mike and I would absolutely love to do feature animation. Either another story, or it if worked out, one in the 'Avatar' world. We would be really excited.

Of course, Mike and I debate and argue - we used to play Ping-Pong to settle arguments. But then Mike got really good.

I think it's touching that the fans feel so close to the characters that they feel personally hurt. I've felt that way in plenty of TV shows - 'Game of Thrones,' 'Mad Men.' How could they do that to that character? That's drama.

Nickelodeon came to us at the end of 2009 with a twelve episode 'mini-season' already green-lit for a new series. They let us do pretty much whatever we wanted with it, as long as it was in the 'Avatar' universe and featured bending.

In an early version of the story, I thought Aang could shepherd a herd of twenty bison.

Definitely female MMA fighters, I'm a big mixed martial arts fan, and watching women's MMA grow was definitely an inspiration. We just had an idea for a character and wanted to do a personality that was the opposite of Aang's, and that's how Korra came about.

We knew we wanted the 'magic' in our show to be different than the typical wand-wielding spell-casting fare. For us, it had to be natural and physical, with a source and rules and limitations - and most importantly it had to be a skill rather than just a power, something that a practitioner had to learn and strive for.

The 'Korra' crew were like a family, and they're so unbelievably talented and dedicated, and got along so well.

I'll just say that America - us included - has a long way to go to catch up with the animated work being done in a handful of countries, namely Japan.

Hopefully, when we're done with the 'Korra' saga we can put our stamp on a movie.

Some Nickelodeon executives were worried about backing an animated action show with a female lead character. Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls. During test screenings, though, boys said they didn't care that Korra was a girl. They just said she was awesome.

When Nickelodeon, in 2009, told us they wanted us to come back and do another series where we could do whatever we wanted, the first thought we had was: Let's do a story about the next 'Avatar.' That was the first thought. The second thought was: Let's make it a girl.

We draw inspiration directly and indirectly from all sorts of things, like movies, documentaries, TV dramas, novels, non-fiction books, animation, science and nature shows, and our own life experiences.

I just follow what inspires me as an artist and a storyteller, and stay true to myself in my work.

We have always put the quest for balance at the center of our storytelling, whether it is the struggle to find it within one character, between a character and society, between disparate cultures or between humans and their environment.

We're always striving to make Avatar look like a cinematic, live-action movie.

As we wrote 'Book 1,' before the audience had ever laid eyes on Korra and Asami, it was an idea I would kick around the writers' room... The more Korra and Asami's relationship progressed, the more the idea of a romance between them organically blossomed for us.

We just don't subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can't have an action series led by a female character. It's kinda nonsense to us.