THE OPPORTUNITY
ANTA, Burrell and Kyrie Irving came to us with a challenge: launch Kyrie’s second signature shoe in a way that felt personal, mythic, and unlike anything else in sport or culture. They didn’t want product-forward ads. They wanted philosophical short films. Something spiritual, visual, and emotional—with six distinct stories for six distinct colorways.
The ask wasn’t just for performance. It was for parable.
This gave us an opportunity to explore the creative frontier we’re most passionate about: human–AI collaboration. Could we use GenAI to help create deeply stylized, animated films that still felt authored, intentional, and emotionally resonant? Could we bring Master KAI to life in a way that felt timeless and cutting edge at the same time?
THE CONCEPT
Each of the six shoe colorways represented a core principle of Kyrie’s alter ego, Master KAI—an enlightened version of himself that lives in a mythic subconscious space.
We built a series of six :15 animated shorts, each centered around a single theme:
- Dallas – The Power of Your Tribe
- Retro ‘90s – The Power of Endurance
- Mother’s Day – The Power of Foundation
- Triple Black – The Power of Discipline
- White Phantom – The Power of Creativity
- Sun – The Power of Voice
Each piece is built like a visual koan—short, rich in metaphor, and voiced by Kyrie himself.
MASTER KAI HAS ENTERED THE ARENA
To launch Kyrie Irving’s second signature shoe with Anta, Tool brought mythology to motion through Know Your Power—a campaign built around six bold colorways, each tied to a core principle of his alter ego.
We started with hand-drawn illustrations, then trained a custom AI model to generate stylized frames with precision. Those frames were animated through a multimodal GenAI workflow and transformed into a series of 15-second parables.
Kyrie’s voice delivers the final touch—personal, powerful, and unmistakably his. A fusion of principle and palette. Craft and character. Technology in service of something uniquely human.
THE PROCESS
1. Defining the Look
We began by shaping Kyrie’s alter ego, Master KAI—a stylized, expressive version of him built through AI-generated poses and refined by hand. This wasn’t a push-button solution. Every frame was curated and elevated by artists to preserve emotion, clarity, and character. AI sparked the imagery, but human touch gave it soul.
2. Kitbashing + Chained AI Tools
Our workflow chained together the strengths of multiple tools—LoRA for poses, ControlNet for environments, SDXL and Topaz for detail, and illustration for finish. This modular approach let us move fast, adapt quickly, and maintain high fidelity across every frame.
3. Creative Orchestration
This wasn’t just about prompts—it was about intuition. Knowing when to push, when to polish, and how to guide the machine. That orchestration allowed us to hit aggressive timelines without compromising creative integrity.
THE SHOE CARDS
To extend the visual storytelling beyond the animated shorts, we created a series of animated and static shoecards. Each card was designed to reflect the core principle of its colorway, translating the parable into a single, arresting visual.
Every shoe was photographed in-house and then composited into rich, metaphor-driven environments inspired directly by the spots. These were not simple product callouts—they were emotional extensions of the story world we had built.
The animated shoecards brought motion to the metaphors—gentle blooming, turbulent waters, shimmering color trails—helping the campaign live as a loopable, shareable series across Kyrie and ANTA’s channels.
They weren’t just ads. They were visual echoes of the world of Master KAI.
OUTPUTS
- 6 x :15 narrative shorts, optimized for social
- 6 x animated shoecards, matching motion and metaphor
- 6 x static key visuals, including 16:9 editorial formats
- Complete modular toolkit for global ANTA teams for use across social channels, in-store placements and other campaign needs.
All assets were released across Kyrie’s and ANTA’s social channels, where they were met with overwhelming audience excitement.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Too often, AI-generated content is a gimmick. This was different. Know Your Power used AI to amplify human creativity, not automate it. Every image, every beat, and every line was carefully shaped by real artists, using new tools to reach further than before.
AI helped us scale. Craft made it matter.
