drawing in animation

Avatar: the last air bender is a children's animated tv series that is based a lot around different martial art types combined with magic. One of the defining factors of this animation (although there are many) is the fluidity and how believable all the fight scenes are in the animation. This is down to lots of research and good drawing based upon it. The creators of the show based the movements on 4 types of martial art and choreographed the movements for the characters based on them. You can see in the concept sketches below that its the key poses in the movements that really matter and the overall form the body takes making them. There is little detail some are just stick figures but they show the key shapes the character needs to form whilst moving through a space. The overall result are amazing creating fight scenes that almost look like dances.