Pro ballers Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan play mom and dad to a gangly Kevin Love and baby Damian Lillard, with “Grampa” Kevin Garnett and trusty State Farm “Good Neighbor” to round out the crew.

‘The Hoopers’ campaign sees the integration of seamless head replacements for Love and Lillard throughout, the result of a strong collaboration and a lot of detailed work from The Mill’s 2D artists.

The Mill’s Executive Creative Director Phil Crowe explains, “This is probably one of the hardest things to achieve in visual effects. Working incredibly carefully and closely with Bryan and DP Scott Henriksen was a massive part in making it work. Without proper lighting, for example, we wouldn’t have been able to pull off the visual effects. You can have the best performances and best composite ever, but if the lighting doesn’t match between the bodies and the heads, it won’t work. The level of detail and collaboration that went into matching those elements was pretty amazing.”

Once the players’ heads were composited into the scene, the 2D team finessed each shot to elevate the realistic elements of the characters. “We went back and forth with Translation to make sure the head size in each shot was just right,” says 2D Lead Artist Adam Lambert. “Once we had the proportions down, it became all about the smaller details – hands going over faces, for example, and adding shadows along the actors’ jawlines and necks. We also warped the skin around the neck and collarbone to make the connection as seamless as possible throughout the movements of the actors.”