The animated film GOAT from Sony has topped the US box office in a quiet weekend, adding 17 million dollars in its second week. With a worldwide total around 102 million, this original comedy about animals playing basketball has found its niche with family audiences. Its moderate drop in earnings indicates that word-of-mouth is working.
Animation and Motion Capture: How to Create Realistic Goat Basketball? 🎬
For a project like GOAT, animating animal characters with complex athletic movements is a technical challenge. It's likely that a combination of keyframe animation and motion capture was used, especially for the basketball sequences. Stephen Curry's involvement suggests that his technique may have served as a reference for the characters' gestures and shots, requiring sophisticated rigging that translated human data into animal anatomies in a believable way.
Will the Next NBA Star Signing Be a Goat with a Wrist Shot? 🏀
After the film's success, it wouldn't be surprising if some league team considered drafting a goat. Its ability to dribble with hooves and height for rebounding are evident advantages. The only drawback would be the rules: they would surely call a technical foul for eating the opponent's jersey or marking territory at half-court. Even so, its free-throw percentage would probably surpass that of some humans.