A much bigger project! I tried a lot of new things with this one.
Nickelodeon's Avatar, the Last Airbender got put on Netflix, and like the good sibling that I am, I forced my younger sister to relish in my own memories of the show by making her watch it with me. At first it took some convincing, as she wasn't really feeling it, but a few episodes in she started telling me it was time to go watch Avatar...
Usually when I've grown attached to intangible content (say TV shows, museum paintings, music and the like) I get this subconscious need to create content in response. It's like a prolonged physical reaction to my inability to actually interact with the things I'm enjoying, kind of like when babies start jumping around unprompted when they hear music or watch a kids' show. When we finished the series, my sister felt content with the well written ending where all her favorite characters come out alive. Despite sharing the same thoughts, I for one was feeling agitated. I had to make something.
Season 3, episode 9 is where samurai Momo makes his cameo, in the form of Aang's sleep deprived hallucinations. He wasn't actually the first Avatar-related thing I worked on; I had started on Yue way before. My reason for committing to Momo was because I wanted to give myself a bit more of a challenge (and also because I couldn't get Yue's nose right) It was about a month of on and off work, what with the other responsibilities I had, but I'm at least content with the result.
There are some smaller details that you won't notice with just a turnaround, and there are also some things - which you'll see later - that I put a good amount of time into but sadly didn't make the final model, for various reasons.
Many of the races in Avatar, the Last Airbender are largely based on real world cultures. While the air nomads are representative of Tibetan culture and Shaolin Monks, samurai obviously hail from Edo era Japan. I wanted to at least try to integrate both of these aspects into the designs somehow, and given Avatar's creators put a great amount of research into various cultures, I figured I should do the same.
Research and Development
Southern Air Temple design.. decided to scrap it early on
Four elements design.. was really fond of this one and got a lot farther with it
the original sketch for Momo's finished pose