i think she did excellent, sure, she doesnt look quite the same as the girl from the cartoon, but its not that bad. besides, who cares if shes white, dark, or whatever. it should be about how their acting was
as katara, i gave her a 9/10
1. The transition from cartoon to film was not the problem, even bad movies have fared better in the transition from cartoon to live action. But few, if any, have changed the race of the 'hero's from Asian to caucasian, whilst keeping the villains as Asian. Whether one likes it or not, the reading of 'Asians are evil' is an ugly one.
2)Animated cartoons are not easy. In fact, they can be a lot trickier than live action film. Years of training in how to draw, for one (and it takes at least 10 years to be a good animator, much longer to be a great one). Computers can't do everything, in fact, they can only do so much. You need skill to be able to do something with it. A:TLAB is animated on a computer, but in a style similar to traditional paper animation, drawn in a progam with a drawing tablet and computer. It takes real hard work. Really hard. 1 episode can take 9 months of seemingly endless work. 24 drawings per second, which have to be drawn, inked, and coloured.
Animated cartoons have a much smaller budget than film. But it takes actual imagination to figure out how to do great storytelling on a limited budget. The film had a much larger budget, it just had no imagination.
3) Acting in animation is actually a lot harder than that. In film, one may have 3 or 4 attempts at a scene, in animation, you may spend the entire day recording one line. Even Tom Hanks has spoken about the issues he has when recording lines for Toy Story. And then when one thinks they are done with a scene, they may be called back in because the animation and acting don't 'quite' fit. Maybe the animation is more exaggerated, maybe the scene has been changed to be more understated, who knows.