Nike launches stunning first-person basketball adventure

Nike and R/GA Shanghai have created a first-person, digital, 'choose your own adventure' story that takes place in highly stylised—and highly awesome—2D animation.

The Road to HBL aims to let fans live through the experience of training for and competing in Nike China's High School Basketball League (Nike HBL).

The agency worked with production companies Final Frontier and Le Cube to create 210 seconds of animation comprising 39 scenes. That content gets packaged, based on user input, into more than 700 possible stories with customisable features including jersey colors and court position.

Ad Nut isn't quite tall enough to be any good at basketball, but greatly enjoys the glimpse of the experience provided in the example film above. The animation is just gorgeous. Here's some individual cels for you to gawk at:

CREDITS

Nike
Basketball Brand Digital Director: Tao Dong
Basketball Sr Brand Digital Manager: Penny Zhao

R/GA
Executive Creative Director: Terence Leong
Senior Art Director: Kaori Lo
Copywriter: Jam Lee
Visual Designer: Martha Ma
Account Director: Richard Zhou
Account Manager: Lexi Wang
Producer: Kris Wang
Content Producer: Emily Lee
Senior Technology Director: Laurent Thevenet
Senior Software Engineer: Adriano Fernandes
Software Engineer: Dragon Chiang
Experience Design Director: Vani Oza

Production Company: Final Frontier
Executive Producer: Gustavo Karam

Animation Studio: Le Cube
Directors: JuanMa Freire and Mariano Fernandez Russo
Executive Creative Director: Ralph Karam
Producer: Fernanda Soma and Larissa Miranda

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