Check out EW’s highlights from the interview below.
“Eric was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, but you need some boots on the ground.
You need someone who’s going after them the whole time.'”
‘Family Guy’ creator Seth MacFarlane and his character Peter Griffin.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; FOX
Konietzko adds, “And I said, ‘Can he have a scar?’
And that’s how Zuko [came about.]”
“We knew that Zuko was going to become Aang’s teacher.”
The Catbus in director Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 movie ‘My Neighbor Totoro’.
DiMartino admits that their shared names did catch his eye at the start of the audition process.
“I remember seeing ‘Dante Basco’ and I jokingly said, ‘That’s our guy right there.
That’s gonna be him.’
And sure enough, it really did end up being you.”
Family Guy ties
DiMartino and Konietzko first met while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Its creatorSeth McFarlane(another RISD alumnus) and Fox loved DiMartino’s episodes.
“They were like, ‘Why can’t you all be more like this guy?'”
DiMartino casually instructed him to whip up some characters, which got him noticed.
“I just started drawing them in theFamily Guystyle.
It was first time I was drawing it,” he says.
“The art director came in and he was like, ‘Who are you?
Where did you come from?
Do you want to take a test?’
“Mike is like a peaceful, mellow [airbender], perfectly round head,” Konietzko says.
“If he’s directing an episode, he’s thinking about the entire episode.
Konietzko says the show’s wide appeal “never surprises” them because they didn’t specifically makeATLAfor children.
“We’ve always said like, ‘Our test audience is Mike and I.’
That’s it just double-check we like it,” he says.
“There’s so many kid shows made for kids that I can’t sit through.
It’s like screeching nonstop.
And I’m like, ‘Why would anyone want to work on that?’
We made a show we wanted to watch and that we wanted to work on.”
Is Avatar anime?
For Konietzko, it’s not really important whetherAvataris considered anime.
Like, what are we doing?'”
“Even the Avatar world isn’t monolithic it is very multicultural,” he says.
Listen to the latest episode below.
