Character Conception
The characters of Avatar: The Last Airbender were designed by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the co-creators of the series. The anime-styled character art was inspired by Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and FLCL (Fooly Cooly) of Gainax. The original character conception was derived from a sketch by Bryan Konietzko that depicted a middle-aged balding man with an arrow on his head. Studios such as Studio 4°C, Production I.G, and Studio Ghibli, which produced anime-styled cartoons, were also sources of inspiration.
The greatest influences on the series were Asian art and history; the characters' various personalities and traits are based on philosophical teachings such as Taoism and Buddhism. In the show, some characters have the ability to manipulate one of the four classic elements of ancient philosophy: Water, Earth, Fire and Air, although the Avatar has the ability to control all four. Each of these employ a different form of martial arts in their fighting choreography: T'ai chi for Waterbending, Hung Gar for Earthbending, Northern Shaolin for Firebending, and Ba Gua for Airbending. These individual styles of martial arts also reflect on the personalities of the user and the nations as a whole. These starkly individual tendencies are explained in eighty-five distinct types of "Jings", or internal energy. For example, Ba Gua employs the "negative jing" to create erratic circular movements and capitalizes on centripetal force and defensive positions while Northern Shaolin follows the "positive jing" and emphasizes brute strength and aggression to generate power. The negative jing reflects Aang's bending styles and his tendency to be unpredictable and extremely carefree, as well as his pacifist and non-aggressive nature.
Many of the recurring characters of the series have received traits based on the respective element. Aang is carefree and childlike, as is commonly attributed to the "freedom" of the wind and the air. Toph, despite being blind, is extremely perceptive of the world around her due to her connection to the Earth. Unlike Aang, she is extremely brusque when criticizing others, as attributed to Earth's toughness.
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—Alla Nazimova (1879–1945)
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