The Post
The Rise of the Merlin
Pendragon has been nominated for the 30th Annual Webby Awards.
The interactive experience we built with Format-3 for The Pendragon Cycle is recognized in the Websites & Mobile Sites category for Television, Film & Streaming. Over 13,000 entries came in from 70+ countries. Fewer than 17% received a nomination.
What we built
The Pendragon Cycle is one of the most ambitious original series of the moment. To set the tone ahead of release, we created an experience that works as an interactive prologue to the show.
Visitors scroll through the world of Pendragon. Atmospheric scenes, cinematic camera movement, and layered motion that reacts to how you navigate. Every section is designed as a "shot" with its own composition, focal point, and timing. It's an opening sequence you explore at your own pace.
The environments feel alive because everything is rendered in real-time 3D, directly in the browser. Landscapes shift, lighting changes, and objects carry physical weight. That's the power of running immersive 3D experiences on the web.
Performance at scale
Building something this visually dense for the browser means being precise about performance. Every animation and high-resolution asset needs to load fast and run smooth, on both the latest MacBook and a three-year-old phone.
We used the same approach as Dior's Garden of Dreams: assets stream progressively, effects are GPU-optimized, and the whole thing stays lightweight despite how rich it looks. Content updates go through a headless CMS, so the site stays flexible and easy to manage after launch.
The collaboration
Format-3 brought the creative direction. We brought the engineering and interaction design. From day one, both teams worked as one. The pacing, the transitions, the way the world reveals itself through interaction, all of that only works when design and development share the same intent.
We wrote more about how we approach those partnerships here.
This is the kind of project we exist for. Extending stories into the browser in a way that feels worthy of the story itself. We're proud of the work, proud of the nomination, and curious to see where it lands.
