In the landscape of social media, artistic jobs are landed in interesting ways with fan artists getting hired for official work with an IP they love. In the case of 14-year-old Preston Mutanga, it was his impressive recreation of the Across the Spider-Verse trailer in Lego form that got him the job for the Across the Spider-Verse movie.
Mutanga uploaded his Lego recreation of the trailer to Twitter back in January and caught the attention of Spider-Verse directors Chris Lord and Phillip Miller. Impressed by the young artist’s creativity the directors reached out to Mutanga to help animate a scene for the film.
“We found out that it was a 14-year-old kid who made it and we were like, ‘This looks incredibly sophisticated for a nonadult, nonprofessional to have made,” Miller told The New York Times. “It blew us all away, including some of the best animators in the world.”
Mutanga began animating as a kid after his father showed him the 3-D software Blender and I instantly got hooked on it. The teenager said he watched a lot of YouTube videos to teach himself certain technical aspects and learned from there.
“I adored the first movie and was so hyped for the second one, so getting to work with the people who actually made this masterpiece was honestly like a dream,” the teen added. Even though Mutanga is still in high school, he said he’s one step closer to achieving his career goal of becoming a full-time animator.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is in theaters now and you can read our review here.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
