Legend of Korra: Republic City Hustle Character Designs

It's been nearly a year since The Legend of Korra prequel shorts, Republic City Hustle, debuted, which I helped animate. The producers wanted to recreate the world of Korra in a new style for the shorts, and I was one of several illustrators asked to take a stab at redesigning the main characters, Bolin and Mako, as younger street urchins. As you can see, they wisely went with another design.

I have to admit to two things:

1. Although I was aware of The Last Airbender and Korra series, I was not very familiar with them. I had cobbled together a vague understanding of the series from promos I saw in between SpongeBob marathons, so I had to do a little research into the characters.

2. The final designs that Nickelodeon did use work way better than the designs I did. Whomever designed them probably had a better understanding of the characters and the story, since they made them significantly younger than I did. I still have not seen an episode of The Legend of Korra.