Autodesk Media & Entertainment
Known for defying expectations, MrBeast (a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson) has built a career on pushing the boundaries of what content can be. Now the most popular YouTuber ever (471M subscribers and counting), he rose to global prominence through extreme challenges, high-ticket giveaways, and large-scale philanthropy. So, when Amazon Prime Video partnered with him to create Beast Games, the goal wasn’t just to go bigger, but to redefine what a competition show could be. In the spirit of a non-violent, Squid Games-inspired competition grounded in real-world stakes, the series was conceived as a massive-scale experiment in storytelling, production, and audience engagement.
To help showcase how that massive vision comes to life, Donaldson turned to longtime collaborators and fellow YouTube creators, SOKRISPYMEDIA, to create an in-depth behind-the-scenes video.
Beast Games Season 1 quickly found its audience, becoming Prime Video’s most-watched unscripted series ever, drawing 50 million viewers in its first 25 days alone, with nearly half tuning in from outside the U.S. Building on that momentum, Season 2, released in early 2026, went even bigger, combining large-scale practical shoots with visual effects to push every sequence beyond what could be captured on set.
“Most people don’t realize just what goes into creating Beast Games,” Donaldson says in the behind-the-scenes VFX video for Beast Games Season 2. “Each one of our sets uses hundreds of cameras, petabytes worth of footage. We have a literal army of editors using some of the highest-quality tech on the planet and mixing in VFX with real contestants and unscripted content.”
YouTube Storytellers Turned VFX Powerhouse: SOKRISPYMEDIA
Founded by Sam Wickert, SOKRISPYMEDIA first gained traction with its hit series Chalk Warfare, which has amassed more than 350 million views. The studio’s YouTube channel has since grown to over 750 million views and 3.1 million subscribers. From there, SOKRISPYMEDIA expanded into high-end production, including developing an innovative previsualization pipeline for its work on HBO’s The Last of Us Season 1.
The team’s collaboration with MrBeast has evolved in parallel. While early projects relied on modest budgets and smaller builds, today, SOKRISPYMEDIA helps highlight and replicate some of the largest-scale productions on TV. From the start, Wickert says there was a clear mandate to “build the magic to elevate production value.” For their video exploring Beast Games Season 2, that mandate scaled exponentially as they set out to replicate the show’s massive setups.
Leveling Up the Game for Season 2
True to MrBeast’s approach, Beast Games Season 2 grew in scale and complexity—introducing larger sets, more intricate environments, and fully realized worlds built for both competition and storytelling. “Walking on set this time around, the scale is monumental,” says Wickert. The set included the world’s largest LED floor, massive obstacle courses, and Beast City, the contestants’ custom-built habitat, including sleeping units, pool, gym, basketball court, café, and the world’s only 24/7 free Starbucks.
Combining the increased production scale with the unpredictability of an unscripted show also ramped up the VFX challenges. “Unlike doing a movie, this is unscripted television, so you never really know what you’re going to get,” says Brendan Forde. “There’s a reason why no one else is doing anything like this.”
To demonstrate how productions handle this fast iteration, SOKRISPYMEDIA showcased their strength in previs. As Wickert put it, “For a production of this scale, you have to over-prepare, and the first step is previs.”
How Flow Studio Accelerated Previs
On an unscripted production like Beast Games—with hundreds of competitors and evolving scenarios—plans can change at any moment. That makes alignment across large teams and rapid turnaround essential. “We talk about [previs] a lot,” Wickert says. “It’s a preview of what you’re going to make, so everyone is on the same page. And it’s crazy how much the tech has changed.”
While SOKRISPYMEDIA still uses traditional motion capture in some cases, to produce quality previs quickly for their replication, they use Autodesk Flow Studio, replacing complex mocap setups with simple camera-based capture. They upload that footage to Flow Studio, which analyzes human performances in the video and translates that motion to an animated 3D character. It also generates camera tracking, lighting, and character rigging data for a fully exportable and editable 3D scene. “Then we’re able to throw it in our previs software and take the shot to final,” says Wickert, who uses Maya or 3ds Max as part of SOKRISPYMEDIA’s previs workflow. “So, not only do we have previs to show everyone, we also have a final look development shot.”
Creating High-End CG Explainers
That same pipeline—camera footage to Flow Studio to Maya/3ds Max—was central to how SOKRISPYMEDIA replicated the show’s complex visual effects for their YouTube video. By demonstrating this workflow, they highlighted the sheer power of the software. Flow Studio’s ability to produce markerless motion capture from single-camera footage proved to be a repeatable, scalable process, showcasing exactly how these high-end VFX shots are achieved.
Technology That Gets Out of the Artists’ Way
For SOKRISPYMEDIA, tools like Flow Studio aren’t a replacement for artists; they help amplify what artists can do. “All the technology just allows you to focus on the art,” Wickert says about Flow Studio. That’s because everything Flow Studio generates is fully editable across several layers of data, keeping artists in creative control throughout the process.
More than just scale, Beast Games represents a shift in how entertainment is made. By replicating these effects, SOKRISPYMEDIA’s video showcases how accessible new technology, like Flow Studio combined with established 3D workflows in Maya and 3ds Max, can be used to pull off the same monumental feats that the biggest, game-changing shows are doing. “As a YouTube team making cinematic content,” Wickert says, “it’s amazing to work with another YouTuber making the largest unscripted reality television show ever made.”