Using a reference based workflow in Maya, I was able to rig on the fly to make changes during the animation stage, for instance creating additional blend shapes as needed, vastly speeding up the production. Several of the shots are based on a simple run so I created a quick run cycle to give me a starting point before adding on the details.

My lighting setup was fairly straight forward with the HDRI images I captured on location and a few additional lights. Along with a variety of different render passes I could tweak the character as needed in compositing to integrate him into the back plates.

There was also quite a bit of rotoscoping required in the comp stage for Mario to run in between people and behind obstacles and so forth. The video below shows an example shot with a rough breakdown of the process from the initial footage through to completion.

The project was incredibly well received and just a couple of years later, there were some interesting similarities to shots from my film and the official the Rio Olympics closing ceremony video which I was pleased to see!