Shadow Lion · Website
Reintroducing a Creative Studio
Background
Shadow Lion is a Boston creative studio that produces brand content and develops original IP. Ahead of FOX Sports announcing a strategic investment in the studio, we designed and built a new single-page homepage centered on their reels.
The problem
Shadow Lion's site described the studio's work across several pages. With the FOX Sports announcement about to send a new and larger audience to the homepage, they wanted a simpler front page that played their reels rather than describing the work behind them.
Our approach
We reduced the homepage to a single screen and let the reel run as large as the viewport allows. Everything that used to describe the work was removed rather than reorganized, so the work itself is the first and only thing a visitor meets.
Trying On Frames
The set was never the hard part. Moving between the three reels was, so we tried it three ways: knobs under the screen, a plain tab strip, and a readout naming whatever was playing. The tab strip won. It was the only version nobody had to figure out first.
Smoke and Reflection
Two effects are not in the footage at all. The smoke behind the page is a Three.js scene on a WebGL2 canvas. The reflection is a second copy of the video, flipped and laid under a cut-out of the set, then blurred and faded so the picture seems to fall onto the floor. We blocked it out in magenta while we built it, so we could see exactly where the reflection landed against the background. Both effects follow whatever reel is playing.
Lighting the Page With the Video
Rather than boxing the reel in a hard-edged container, we let its light spill into the black around it. The glow shifts with whatever is on screen. Nothing is painted on: the video generates it.
Three Reels, One Frame
Originals, Brands and Talent sit under the screen as three tabs, each swapping in a different cut of the studio's work. The whole portfolio lives behind one frame, with no menu and no interior pages. The layout's job was to stay out of the way and keep playing.
Built in Small Steps, With AI in the Loop
When there is this little on the page, every detail has to be right, and we got there through a long run of small iterations in Claude Code: try a change, look at it, adjust, try again. The smoke, reflection and glow each went through dozens of passes, which is how something this simple ended up this polished before the announcement.
Back for a Second Site
We built Shadow Lion's previous site in 2023, a larger multi-page piece built around a custom video player, written up in Designing a New Video Experience. Coming back two years later meant we already knew the studio, the work and the way they talk about it, so this round could start from what to take away rather than what to add.
