Middle-earth: Shadow of War — Combat Camera Reel
The procedural combat cameras I designed for Middle-earth: Shadow of War, one system that framed thousands of attacks from any angle the player chooses.
On Shadow of War I was an Advanced Artist in the Realization group, the team responsible for presenting the game to the player. We owned the camera work for everything except pre-rendered cinematics. My focus was combat, along with the Nemesis moments: kill cams, real-time cinematics, Domination, and Last Words.
The combat camera is one of the most important systems in an action game. It is how every hit reads and feels. This reel compiles that combat camera work.
Rather than hand-shoot each move, I designed a procedural camera system that films any combat move from any angle, driven by the orbit angle the player is currently holding. It covers special moves, insta-kills, finishers, kill cams, and mid-combat scenes. I designed the cameras, worked with the engineers to develop the camera features, and implemented them across thousands of attacks in the game's database.
That is the whole point. One system, authored once, delivered cinematic framing across thousands of moments no team could shoot by hand. It is the throughline that runs through my career and into Slip Theory: I design systems that procedurally build and deliver story and action moments in games, and the tools around them, so a small group delivers AAA presentation. It helped make Shadow of War one of the most visceral combat experiences in games.