While it’s no shock to encounter a reptile or two on public transit, Toronto’s dave put a much more startling breed of cretaceous commuters on the Red Rocket in the new opening sequence for the Toronto Raptors which appears above the court at the new Air Canada Centre.

dave combined cg with the look of traditional cel animation together with clay elements for a new take on the familiar Raptor personage in an animated piece which encourages repeat viewings.

The sequence opens on the eye of a Raptor, roused to action by the Raptor-logo-beacon beaming across the Toronto cityscape, and follows a team of game-obsessed ‘saurs on a trip to work through the readily identifiable streets of Hogtown. No limos for these players; the stars of the piece walk with the people on the ttc or are jet-propelled to the Air Canada Centre. The trip is punctuated by lifelike city-block-spanning hoop antics with a fiery basketball and concludes with an explosive slam dunk.

The mandate from the Raptors organization was to produce a ‘roller-coaster ride’ of a piece to introduce the team at the new home court.

dave creative director Michael Clark introduced the idea of creating a comic-book-inspired interpretation of the Raptors. ‘We wanted a graphic image for the characters that would really move but at the same time not have too much detail to get in the way of the story,’ says Clark.

Clark, whose background is in traditional stop-motion animation, wanted to create a unique look, marrying performance animation with a traditional cel look done in cg, achieved using toon shading in Softimage.

‘I wanted to find a way to use cg to get a toon kind of look,’ he says.

The team used motion capture by Puppetworks to nail the subtle moves of man and beast – with an educated motion-capture performance given by Ryan, the Raptors mascot – and although the data wasn’t ultimately used, Clark says it gave an excellent reference point for him as a director and for the animators.

The favorable response to the piece by the real Raptors was likely due to the fact that the players saw their own sweet selves mirrored in the movements of the animated Raptors: the characters were fleshed out by storyboard artist Steve Manale, an ardent hoops fan who brought in depth knowledge of basketball moves and the peculiarities of the Raptors stars to the piece.

All characters were created using Softimage; the rich backgrounds were done in Side Effects’ Houdini and textured in Softimage.

‘The detail in the backgrounds is incredible,’ says animation producer Jan Saywell. ‘You have to watch it 20 times to take it all in.’

For an additional challenge, Clark threw in some clay; the heads of three of the characters in the piece are made of it.

Senior animator on the project was Phil Jones and Mike Morey composited elements together in Inferno.

Audio was done by Billy Bryans, who produced the piece. Sound effects editing was done at dave.