Inside ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Season 2 VFX

VFX Supervisor Ross Wilkinson spoke with Jack Giroux of What's on Netflix to discuss the visual effects behind Season 2 of Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender.

From bringing baby sky bison to life to evolving the show's elemental bending, Ross explores how the team built upon our Season 1 work while navigating the creative and technical challenges of Season 2.

This season brings Aang, Katara, and Sokk back for another adventure. Fantastical creatures and settings only get bigger, more complicated in the second season, based on the classic animated show.

"I absolutely fell in love [with Appa]. I was a big fan of the series, the original series. But I never did a deep dive into the original series until I got to work on the project. And so, when I deep dived into Appa and I bought all the concept books, I read as much as I could from the original series and took as much reference as I could," shared Ross. "When we created Appa, what was really interesting is that, yes, he was a bison. He’s a sky bison, but he’s also based on a manatee. His tail is that of a manatee. You’re trying to layer in on top of that. How would I interpret this creature? We then looked at hippos and large mammals that we thought would work. We lent on hippos quite a lot, actually, to be fair. It was hippos, manatees, and bison for the groom."

Read the full interview here.