Falcon’s Creative Group Brings Virtual Worlds to Karate Combat Season 2

Falcon’s Creative Group, a leading experience design and digital media company, produced over two and a half hours of visual effects content for the second season of Karate Combat, the full-contact karate league.

The new season seamlessly blends real-world athletic events with cutting-edge virtual production to transport audiences to simulated worlds.

Falcon’s visual effects contributions can be seen in the first three episodes of Season 2, where fighters battle amidst sci-fi temples on the fictional planet of “Anger Wat.” The action is called by MMA legend Bas Rutten and former NFL superstar Marshawn Lynch.

The production team utilized the latest camera tracking technology and virtual production techniques, as well as the real-time capabilities of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to reference the virtual environments while filming live. The events were filmed in Budapest, Hungary with Falcon's team member Joey Kowalewicz providing on-set VFX Supervision.

In post-production, Falcon’s created a new pipeline to quickly process the nearly 1,400 VFX shots. Once edits were locked, Falcon’s chroma-keyed the footage and replaced the backgrounds with high-fidelity 3D environments in daytime, sunset, and nighttime lighting scenarios.

"When we were first approached by Karate Combat, we were excited to help them achieve something that had never been done before,” said Jason Ambler, VP of Digital Media at Falcon’s Creative Group. “We are honored to have been a part of this trailblazing new future for Karate Combat and sports broadcasting as a whole.”

Karate Combat Season 2 will air in 50+ countries, across 5 continents, including distribution deals ESPN Deportes, BeIN Sports, FreeSports, GOL, and more.