What if Mario could actually hand over the prize?
Irancell’s Shanskhor campaign was built around a familiar character: Mario, or as we know him here, the Mushroom Guy.
The campaign itself had already run. Our job was different: bring the grand prize winner on stage and make the prize-giving moment something people would remember.
So we had a simple question:
If the campaign was built around Mario, why shouldn’t Mario himself give away the prize?
From the Game to the Stage
We decided not to bring Mario in as a costume, mascot, or pre-rendered animation.
We wanted him alive.
We created a 3D model of Mario and rigged his body, hands, fingers, eyes, and mouth so he could move and react in real time.
Then we put an actor in a separate room, in front of a green screen, and used Kinect motion capture to track his movements.
Those movements were mapped onto Mario live.
Behind the scenes, TouchDesigner brought the different visual layers together and turned the setup into a real-time interactive experience.
Wait... Is That Still the Game?
The experience started inside the familiar world of the game.
Mario was walking along, just like he normally would.
Then he stopped.
He started moving toward the camera.
He got bigger.
And suddenly, he was no longer just part of the game.
Mario was alive.
Meeting the Winner
The winner was brought on stage with her son and seated in front of the screen.
At first, she was simply watching the game.
Then Mario started walking toward her.
And the game became a conversation.
Mario talked to her in real time, congratulated her, and asked what she planned to do with her prize.
Her answer made the moment even more personal:
She had promised her son that she would buy him a laptop.
What started as a digital character became part of a very real moment between a mother, her son, and a very unexpected Mario.
A Two-Billion-Toman Surprise
The prize was worth around 2 billion tomans.
So after the conversation, Mario revealed the prize on screen, followed by confetti and the final celebration.
The host then joined them on stage to present the gift, take photos, and wrap up the moment.
We Didn't Just Give Away a Prize.
We turned a prize-giving ceremony into a live character experience.
A game character.
A real actor.
Real-time motion capture.
A live conversation.
And one very surprised winner.
Because when your campaign is called Shanskhor and is built around Mario, sometimes the only reasonable way to give away the prize...
is to let the Mushroom Guy do it.
Turns out, the Mushroom Guy had one more level to play.