Hopefully there will be a museum of art dedicated solely to gifs someday. When that day comes, these great creations featuring basketball players going Super Saiyan by Reddit user Noise_filter deserve their own exhibit. Noise_filter has been delighting fans throughout the 2015 NBA playoffs, turning memorable moments into epic Dragonball Z mashups using Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
Let’s take a look through his work thus far, with commentary from the artist himself:
Michael Jordan going Super Saiyan after making The Shot
I put a lot of effort into this latest GIF. Rotoscope took well over 10 hours – and that was for a “quick and dirty” roto. The original source footage was 480p (and tilted!) – I did an upres to try and achieve slightly better quality. … It was tough to make the jersey swap happen this time with the lower quality source footage, but managed to make it work somehow! :) I’m hoping that people will start contributing their own DBZ GIFs as well. There’s always room for more!
A Steph Curry GIF to celebrate the Warriors 2015 NBA Championship
Initially, I wasn’t sure how well a Spirit Bomb would work as a 3-pointer, but after some tweaking, I think I got it looking alright. … You probably already know that the fans are Curry’s family – with the excitement level they showed, I felt like it was appropriate!
Steph Curry going Super Saiyan in Game 4 of the NBA Finals
The big heads have been quite polarizing among everyone. I’m starting to think it’s more about whether you played NBA Jam as a kid. It started as my throwback to NBA Jam! The larger heads also have a side benefit of showing facial emotions much more clearly. I was torn on what shot to use from Game 4 – I really wanted to use Iguodola because I felt he was the difference maker in that game. However, I felt like this shot of Curry worked better than the Iguodola footage that was available.
Lebron James after winning Game 2 of the NBA Finals
That LeBron moment was too perfect and I had to do something with it. I do this for a living, but this one was all for fun! I’ve been trying to top myself with each GIF, but it’s starting to get a bit difficult, haha! … I’m a freelance motion graphics artist that is taking the Summer off to explore some fun little personal projects like these! … I spent around 12-16 hours on each of the four GIFs I made last week. It was a long week to say the least! … So many people have shared/rehosted/stolen/credited/not-credited me, but end result is more people seeing it!
Matthew Dellavedova using Destructo Disc to shut down Steph Curry in Game 2
I pulled another all-nighter to get this done before Game 4. … After seeing Dellavedova’s effort in Game’s 2 and 3, I felt like he deserved his own version of a “Super Saiyan” gif! … I purposely did not show the aftermath of the Destructo Disc’s effect on Cell Curry :)
And the original Super Saiyan gif that inspired noise_filter:
The soccer coach GIF was done by the super talented chluaid (the OG Godfather of the Super Saiyan GIF and my inspiration for all of these GIFs. His animation skills are on another level compared to mine, but I hope I can eventually make something that could be comparable.
Props to Noise_filter and all the other people making gifs like these over at /r/SuperSaiyanGifs!
