How Avatar: Seven Havens Ties Back On Aang & Korra Explained By Cast And Creators | ScreenRant Plus
While at NYCC, Avatar: Seven Havens EPs Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, Sehaj Sethi, and Ethan Spaulding were joined by stars Saheli Khan (Pavi), Aishu Devan (Nisha), and Major Curda (Ja) to introduce the new generation of characters and lay out the multi-season plan for the show.
New episodes of Avatar: Seven Havens drop Fridays on Paramount+.
From CBR:
Avatar: Seven Havens Showrunner Cut a Zip-Line Element of the Story
Showrunner Ethan Spaulding also reveals which renowned anime films inspired Avatar: Seven Havens' design and animation.
Before people in Avatar: Seven Havens walked, they zip-lined.
That's right, an early concept for Avatar: Seven Havens involved zip-lines in the city of Ellora, one of the seven "havens" that make up the world after an apocalyptic event. According to executive producer and showrunner Ethan Spaulding, the offbeat transportation method would've been too much to animate for a television series. He clarified further to CBR's Katie Doll in an exclusive interview:
"There was a script that Sehaj [Sethi] had. In Ellora, all the characters were going to be going around by zip lines. I was like, 'There's no way we can produce this.' It was awesome, but they had written how everything's transported in the city with all these cables everywhere. I was like, 'That'll just be a nightmare.' Maybe for a movie or something, but there's no way on TV we could do that justice. That was an early one that was taken away early."
Zip-lining was cut altogether from Avatar: Seven Havens, but the show was still determined to look like a dream inside a terrifying nightmare. The series follows twins Pavi and Nisha, who are the first twins to be Avatars. Living in a post-apocalyptic world, they must keep their identities as the Avatars a secret to avoid scrutiny, while also learning the truth about their mysterious past.
Speaking more about the animation style behind Avatar: Seven Havens, Spaulding identified specific eras of the anime genre that helped define the colorful, fantastical look of the series' environment.
"Art direction-wise, which flows into the animation also, there was a wish list up top from Michael [Dante DiMartino] and Bryan [Konietzko], not a mandate, that it was going to be post-cataclysm," Spaulding revealed. "There's going to be all this weather phenomenon. We knew it was going to be kind of a reset that's more fantasy-based. That kind of informed the look, and then there was also talk about simplifying the designs. It really comes from early anime — '70s, '80s, '90s anime."
The character design also somewhat departs from the visual identity of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, known for his Studio Ghibli films, and French artist Moebius were inspirations for Seven Havens' new stylistic direction.
"The use of color in this is more... I don't know if it's more expressive or not, but there was a thought of having no shadows on the characters at one point," Spaulding remarked. "Early Hayao Miyazaki Ghibli films didn't really have shadows on the characters, like heavy shadows. Therefore, we thought it would be easier for the animators to handle the characters without a lot of extra lines and stuff. I think a new look was welcome. It was very, very much steeped in anime and fantasy, like Moebius, if you're familiar with that artist. A lot of Nausicaä [of the Valley of the Wind]. [That film] has hallmarks and a Moebius vibe, too."
Avatar: Seven Havens Episodes 1–3 are currently streaming on Paramount+. Episodes 4–6 premiere October 16.
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