'Dear Basketball' Director Recalls Working With Kobe Bryant in 'Pencils vs Pixels' Exclusive Clip

In the brand documentary Pencils Vs Pixels, fans get to see how animators bring their favorite characters to life. PopCulture.com now has an exclusive clip from the film, which features Dear Basketball director Glen Keane. In the clip, the animator recalls working with late NBA icon Kobe Bryant on their Oscar-winning short film and how the collaboration came to be.

"It's a way of registering something inside of me that I almost can't even control, that it comes out in the way I put the line on the paper," Keane says of drawing at the beginning of the clip. "I think of it as like a seismograph of your soul, is this energy that you draw with, and I feel like there is something that we are communicating actually in the way you put the line down."

He then goes on to recall, "My son, Max, as we were working on Duet at one point, which was hand-drawn, he said, "Dad, you realize every line you make is the first time and the last time that that stroke will ever be made in the history of time. There will never be another line like that line.'' Keane continues, "We learned that, because as we would do that, we took a look at a line. It was like a field of graphite stardust, and it was different every stroke. It was a revelation to me of the importance of line and energy, and that little film allowed me to communicate how I felt about a little boy, a little girl growing up through the drawing."

Reflecting on how his partnership with Bryant came to be, Keane shared, "Kobe saw that, and when he asked me to animate his letter to basketball, Dear Basketball, he said, 'But it's got to be hand-drawn. There's this soul to it. There's this touch.' All the things that I felt, he was saying back to me, and I was like, 'Yeah. We got to do this.' We won an Academy Award in 2018, which was an experience I'll never forget." Keane later concludes, "Whatever form your dream may take, it's through passion and perseverance that the impossible is possible."

Pencils vs. Pixels is "a celebration of 2D hand-drawn animation and the transformative journey from the Disney Renaissance to the computer animation revolution... and the inspiring future yet to come." It is directed by Bay Dariz and Phil Earnest and narrated by Ming-Na Wen. Animators featured in the documentary include Seth MacFarlane, Alex Hirsch, Peter Docter, John Musker and many more. Pencils Vs Pixels is now available to rent or own Digitally.