Pendragon Cycle
A cinematic website for a fantasy franchise, built before the series aired.
The Pendragon Cycle is a fantasy book and television franchise. Before any of it reached a screen, it had to exist online as a world people could believe in. I set the look and the tone, directed the camera through every section, and art-directed the build across two studios. It opened ahead of the series and won a Webby People's Voice award.
Highlights
- Directed as camera movement, shot by shot
- What WebGL could do, decided by the story
- The atmosphere never breaks between sections
- An earthy, muted palette, epic without the clichés
- One vision held across two studios and four people
Problem
Most show sites inform. A cast list, a trailer, a countdown. This one had no episode to point at, so it had to carry the atmosphere, the lineage and the lore on its own.
I directed the site as film. You travel through the world instead of reading about it, and every reveal is timed like a shot. Someone who has never opened the books should come away believing the world is real.
The arc
The site runs in three acts, in one scroll. The story sets the tone. The map turns sprawling geography and backstory into something to move through. The lineages render the houses and their characters as a living system.
The craft
Bold, characterful type carries the mythic tone and still reads at speed. The atmosphere is built from light, haze and depth of field, set once and carried into every section, so moving from the map to the lineages feels like moving through one place.
How it was made
The team was four people across two studios: a web designer and a motion designer at Format-3, and two engineers at Merlin Studio building the real-time WebGL. I managed all four.
A comp that reads as epic in a static frame can go generic or heavy the moment it has to run. Directing it meant knowing what the browser could actually render, then spending that on the moments the story needed and letting the rest stay quiet. My job was one clear vision, then feedback frame by frame until the screen felt like the world.
Before the first episode aired, you could already walk the world: its map, its houses, its lineages.
Nine more awards followed, for the design and direction.
“Format-3's work had a big impact by elevating the brand and creating a unique, premium experience. Feedback has been universally similar: we've been surprised and impressed with the quality of the site, which brings to life a book and TV series in a unique and immersive way.”
