#Animated basketball swish free#

“And he showed us exactly how he did it and we filmed it so it was true. “It was from the opening line of his poem and, for Kobe, it was everything,” Keane said. But one memory nearly alluded Keane until he spotted it in one of the storyboards done by his son, Max: Bryant rolling his dad’s tube socks. Other personal details from Bryant’s childhood can be found in the short: the posters of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson on his bedroom wall and the VHS tapes of Bulls’ and Lakers’ championships. They were anchors of his career, and I learned that Kobe’s greatest asset is not his athletic ability but his ability to learn.” They were vivid memories that he put specifically into his visual poem. “These details of him as a child were so important. “So he told me that when he was doing that shot, he was reliving that moment as a little kid and it went through the basket,” added Keane. After overshooting the pole, he learned to throw it back to compensate to hit his target. And so he asked the NBA superstar how he made the shot, and he told him a childhood anecdote about trying to hit a telephone pole with a rock while racing on his bike. But this was different.”īut, employing a valuable lesson from Disney legend Ollie Johnston, Keane knew it was more important to convey what Bryant was thinking than what he was doing.

#Animated basketball swish free#

I knew what it was like being a mermaid, swimming free through the water and the weightless feeling. But this chance to actually be a basketball player was really unique. “I’m really drawn to that as an animator. “The most captivating thing in the world for me is the human body in motion, doing what seems to be physically impossible things,” said Keane (the Oscar-nominated “Duet”). Early on, in fact, Keane made the crucial connection between basketball and ballet, creating a dance between the young and adult versions of Bryant.

And why not? It’s an exquisite little piece (adapted from Bryan’t’s retirement poem and co-produced by him), which traces his fascination with basketball as a child and how that passion and drive led to an extraordinary 20-year career capped by five NBA championships.īesides, the project inspired Keane, the former Disney animator (“Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid”), to reach new heights of hand-drawn fancy. It’s going to be very hard for the Academy to resist nominating the animated short, “Dear Basketball,” given the star power of Kobe Bryant, John Williams, and Glen Keane.