Nickelodeon's 'Legend of Korra' Gets a Dose of 'Walking Dead' at Comic Con

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By Sara Roncero-Menendez2013-10-16 07:00:49 UTC

The Legend of Korra panel at New York Comic Con gave fans a chance to meet The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun — the newest voice actor for the animated Nickelodeon show — and learn exactly how he got involved.

Yeun, best known for his role as Glenn Rhee on AMC's zombie thriller The Walking Dead , revealed he was well versed in the history of the show before he was cast.

"My friend Andy, who is responsible for putting me onto The Walking Dead comic before I even booked that, actually put me onto Avatar, saying 'You need to watch this. It’s super good,’" Yeun told the audience. "And then as soon as I book the thing that’s when I caught up with Korra. I'm just glad to be part of this whole amazing thing.”

The panel screened episode 7, "Beginnings, Part One," which introduces Wan (voiced by Yeun). The episode explores how he became the first Avatar, a bender who can master all four elements and must bring balance to the world. The panel also detailed t how an episode is made.

Steven Yeun

Along with Yeun, the panel featured creator Bryan Konietzko, director Joaquim Dos Santos, Janet Varney who plays Korra and P.J. Byrne who voices Bolin.

Konietzko answered questions about the voice actors and said Varney is already recording dialogue for the untitled Book 4 (season 4).

The behind-the-scenes look into the show's creation process included a detailed description of how a 30-second clip of the show is completed.

“The average episode of Korra has 15,000 of [individual] drawings,” Konietzko said when referring to the key animation portion of development. “And so when you guys are complaining about how long it takes us –- 15,000 drawings.”

As an example, they used episode 10, "A New Spiritual Age," where Jinora enters the Spirit World with Korra. Konietzko and Dos Santos said they begin with a scene description, then go through several steps including storyboards, animatic, sound design and finally color correction and final audio mixing.

"Beginnings, Part One" will air on Nickelodeon on Friday, October 18th as part of an hour-long special about Wan's story and Korra's quest to find the mysterious Rava.

You can watch the full panel on YouTube in three parts here, here and here.

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