Glen Keane And Kobe Bryant Take ‘Dear Basketball’ Oscar Campaign To James Corden’s Show

There are 10 animated shorts currently on the Academy Awards shortlist for best animated short, but only one of those films is generating mainstream attention: Dear Basketball.

Last night, the director of the short, Glen Keane, and the film’s writer/voice-over artist Kobe Bryant, appeared together on The Late Late Show with James Corden, with Keane sketching out a 3d version of The Little Mermaid’s Ariel using an HTC Vive headset and the Google painting app Tilt Brush.

As anyone in animation knows, it’s a special event whenever an animator appears on a late-night talk show. And I can’t easily recall the last time an animator appeared on a talk show to promote an animated short. In this case, Bryant’s celebrity helped the cause; the former NBA star also had his own guest segment on Corden’s show last night.

It’s also interesting to note that Keane didn’t draw Bryant, the star of the film that was being promoted, and instead tapped into Disney nostalgia, drawing an easily recognizable character from his earlier career as a supervising animator at Disney. Keane has previously demoed Tilt Brush and drawn other Disney characters with the software.