Indiana Pacers · Slept On

The Indiana Pacers had a point to make: they were one of the most slept-on teams in the NBA. STN Digital brought CrispFX in to turn that into a piece of animation fans would actually stop for.

The brief

The audio was already set: a Kendrick Perkins clip talking up the Pacers, player by player. The art was set too. Another illustrator had painted Sabonis, Warren, Turner, Brogdon and the Holiday brothers as layered Photoshop frames.

The brief was to bring those paintings to life without losing what made them good, and land the whole thing on the Eastern Conference standings and #WholeNewGame.

The approach

I split each painting into moving parts and animated every player to the beat of the audio, so each line of Perkins' clip lands on the right person: a dunk for the 20 points a night, a shot block for the player at the top of the charts, the Holiday brothers side by side.

The illustrator's brush texture stays untouched throughout. Movement comes from timing, camera and parallax, not from redrawing their work. The piece builds to the full squad and resolves on the standings graphic.

I did the same for NBC's Sunday Night Football season kickoff: a run of painted player portraits, from Patrick Mahomes to Khalil Mack, each brought to life in the original artist's style. These are two of my favourite projects. Respecting someone else's art while giving it life is a craft of its own.

What was delivered

• Animated illustration, just under 60 seconds, 1:1 for social
• Versions with and without captions
• Sunday Night Football season kickoff, 4:5 for social