As I’m not a sporty person myself, it was difficult to visualise realistic basketball movement without strong reference. I spent a lot of time gathering and stitching references together. I also used motion capture to block in a rough layout pass, which served as additional reference. While the final animation was fully hand-keyed from scratch, motion capture was extremely useful during the layout stage as it significantly sped up my initial process. As I was animating, I asked friends who play basketball for feedback to ensure the actions felt believable.

This ended up being one of the most challenging shots I’ve worked on. Matching the ball timing while keeping the footwork natural was especially tricky, and I had to redo the behind-the-back beats several times before it felt right. There’s still room for improvement, but I’m happy with the result and learned a lot from the process. I plan to revisit this animation in the future, as I’ve set very high expectations for this project.