{"id":71256,"date":"2026-07-24T11:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T03:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=71256"},"modified":"2026-07-24T11:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T03:10:08","slug":"the-last-airbender-address-early-leaks-keeping-the-animation-2d-and-creating-a-new-avatarian-language-at-san-diego-comic-con-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=71256","title":{"rendered":"The Last Airbender Address Early Leaks, Keeping the Animation 2D, and Creating a New Avatarian Language at San Diego Comic-Con 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"


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While showing off an early concept photo of the aged-up Team Avatar at a San Diego Comic-Con panel on Thursday afternoon, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender director Lauren Montgomery recalled one of the films’ earliest leaks in a rollout that’s been plagued by unfortunate leaks. The image in question was what Montgomery called the “Avengers shot,” with the characters posing together that leaked out of CinemaCon in 2024 before it was taken down.<\/p>\n

“This was one of the very first funny stories about this image. We had a version of this image, exact same painting. The characters looked a little bit different,” Montgomery said. “Our production designer Jake [Panian] was never really happy with it. And then Paramount comes to us and says, \u2018We want to go to CinemaCon.\u2019 Jake is, like, \u2018Absolutely not. It’s gonna leak.\u2019 They’re like, \u2018No, no, no, no. It won’t leak. Everything’s safe.\u2019\u2029Everything leaks. [Jake]’s like, ‘Well, if they’re gonna leak it, I’m gonna repaint the whole thing.’ And he did. And it looks beautiful, and it looks amazing, and we’ve used this image a lot of times. And of course, it leaked. Cell phone camera footage of it from a weird angle. And then it’s used as, like, official artwork in freakin\u2019 interviews and posts everywhere. So, good time.”<\/p>\n

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Moving on from the anecdote, Montgomery walked through a slideshow of early character design concept art. She showed an Aang with a chinstrap-style beard, many iterations of Zuko’s hairstyle, multiple versions of Sokka (“The note was alsays don\u2019t let ‘Sokka get TOO hot,'” Montgomery said), Toph in a “metalbending police get-up,” and a pregnant Katara. “We moved away from that for our own reasons but a lot of those versions influenced the final version of Katara we see in the film,” Montgomery said.<\/p>\n

“We’re trying to keep this art form alive a little bit longer.\u201d\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

In mapping out how the team would then animate these rendered images for the feature film, Avatar co-creator Bryan Konietzko reflected on maintaining the importance of Avatar’s defining animation style in the same panel that was attended by his fellow Avatar creator Mike DiMartino and most of the core voice cast of the movie. \u201cOne of the first things that we talked about was what the medium was going to be. No one told us, but we just assumed: It’s a feature film. There’s incredible stuff, like Spider-Verse, Arcane\u2026 people are doing really stylized, beautiful things with 3D characters that are kind of pushed more towards to 3D. So we just assumed initially, ‘Oh, I guess that’s what we’ll do.\u2019 And we started trying to figure out what that would look like. <\/p>\n

“But then one day it just hit me,” Konietzko continued. “I was like, \u2018What are we doing? This is Avatar. This is a love letter to Japanese anime. This needs to stay 2D. These characters need to be hand drawn.\u2019<\/p>\n

Our friends and peers in the industry \u2014 in the Western industry, especially \u2014 they want to do 2D, but they’re being forced to do 3D. And again, there’s beautiful stuff being done in 3D, but as artists, we should be able to explore all these different mediums. Mike and I were just like, ‘You know what? We’re gonna do 2D,’ and luckily, our bosses were not forcing us to do 3D. So that’s what we did. We’re trying to keep this art form alive a little bit longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating a New Langauge System<\/h2>\n

Konietzko also walked through the process of creating a new written language for the universe moving forward, called Avatarian. <\/p>\n

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A look at the written language!#SDCC2026 #ATLA #AvatarAang pic.twitter.com\/AtkpZyt8h8<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Cartoon Universe (@CartoonUV) July 23, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhen we came back to do Avatar studios, we were working with our cultural consultants,” Konietzko said. “Now that we had more time and resources for some projects, we had some discussions and realized doing the traditional thing we’ve been doing, where we’re using Chinese as the rhythm language for the Avatar world. That was great, and we love that stuff, but it didn’t make as much sense with all the kind of real-world cultures that we pull from for inspiration in Avatar. So I was like, \u2018All right, I’m going to create a written language for Avatar.\u2019 \u2029<\/p>\n

“So I just locked myself in my office for like three months. But I never like in fantasy stuff when the fantasy language just looks like English in cosplay, you know? It just looks like the Roman alphabet in cosplay. I was really inspired by Hangul, which I had studied when I was working on Avatar in Korea.\u2029I built this language that it’s a phonetic language that \u2014 if anything can be expressed with IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet, it can be translated to Avatarian, and it creates these little syllable blocks, kind of Hangul. And then I use, like, these really simplified four element symbols as our kind of base radicals for the language.\u201c<\/p>\n

Other Avatar Aang reveals from the SDCC panel:<\/h3>\n
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New Legends Will Rise. Avatar: Seven Havens, coming to Paramount+ Oct 9th pic.twitter.com\/oKc3zXiLNn<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Paramount+ (@paramountplus) July 23, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n