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The teenager landed a job after creating a LEGO-style version of the movie's first trailer in Blender.
Back in early 2023, Digital Artist from Canada Preston Mutanga shared a LEGO-style 3D recreation of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse's first official trailer, catching the attention of Chris Lord and Phil Miller, Across the Spider-Verse's Producers and the Directors of 2014's The LEGO Movie. Having been impressed by Mutanga's animation, the producers reached out to the artist and invited him to the team, a proposal Mutanga eagerly agreed to.
The story, however, wouldn't be half as interesting if not for the artist's age. As it turned out, the creator who managed to blow away some of the best animators in the world was a 14-year-old school boy, who studied Blender in his free time by watching YouTube tutorials.
As reported by The New York Times, Mutanga spent several weeks animating a LEGO sequence for Across the Spider-Verse, working remotely from Toronto and speaking regularly with Miller, who would check on the progress and provide feedback. According to the artist, being a part of the movie's production team felt "like a dream", as Mutanga is a fan of the first installment and was hyped up for the sequel.
"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'," Phil Miller told NYT. "It blew us all away, including some of the best animators in the world."
"One new thing I learned was definitely the feedback aspect of it, like how much stuff actually gets changed from the beginning to the final product," commented Preston Mutanga.
"The LEGO Movie is inspired by people making films with Lego bricks at home," noted Chris Lord. "That's what made us want to make the movie. Then the idea in Spider-Verse is that a hero can come from anywhere. And here comes this heroic young person who's inspired by the movie that was inspired by people like him."
Back in May, Mutanga also shared a LEGO-style recreation of the second trailer:
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