A motion-led portfolio site for an animation studio

About the project

What we built

Little Giant is a multidisciplinary studio making motion work for brands — CGI product films, character animation, broadcast spots. For a studio like that, a portfolio site has a problem most sites don't: static screenshots misrepresent the product entirely. The work only reads when it's moving.

So the site leads with the reel, full-bleed and running, and keeps the interface almost entirely out of its way — a wordmark, three links, and nothing else competing with the frame.

That decision creates the engineering brief. Video-first sites are usually slow, so the build is careful about what actually loads: the reel is compressed and served to suit the viewport, playback is deferred until it can start cleanly, and the work index streams thumbnails rather than pulling full clips a visitor may never open.

Beneath the reel the studio states what it does in one sentence, then gets straight back to showing rather than telling — the work index is the argument, and everything else is kept short enough not to interrupt it.