Baby Appa creature concept art - Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2

I worked within Framestore’s Art department on Avatar: The Last Air Bender Season 2.
I collaborated closely with Framestore VFX Supervisor Ross Wilkinson and art Director Dan Baker to help establish the look for both Mama Appa as well as Baby Appa over the span of 2-3 weeks in late December 2024 until start February 2025.

I was tasked with designing Baby Appa from scratch using as reference the original cartoon drawings.

Starting with initial 2D line art sketches, I explored various anatomy and animal references such as baby calf, bison and hippopotamus. The goal of this early phase was to design and figure out the difference between Adult Appa previously established in season 1 and himself as a baby.

The primary challenge was finding a cute, fluffy and approachable look while having the baby being the size of an adult cow and retaining Appa's likeness! Ultimately we landed using mostly bison anatomy with the fluffiness and fat layers of Chow Chow dogs.

Once a selected sketch was approved I pushed it to final frames using 2D only photo-bashing and painting process due to tight deadlines.
The process was very smooth and the VFX was then carried forward by the awesome VFX team at Framestore.