Days after the debut of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the sequel is already being lauded as a marvel of animation and a fascinating mix of mediums. There’s even a small reference to Insomniac’s upcoming Spider-Man game hidden in the film.
But one segment in the latest Spider-Man film wasn’t animated by a massive team of artists and creators, but was instead crafted by a single 14-year old animator after his previous work went viral.
If you don’t want to be spoiled about a minor moment in the new Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse film, stop reading and turn around now. You’ve been warned.
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse is a fantastic and incredibly gorgeous film that features dozens of art styles mixing and mashing together to create one of the best-looking movies of the last decade. As Miles Morales explores even more dimensions this time around, we get to see a whole lotta different versions of Spider-Man, New York City, and the web-slinger’s famous rogues gallery. And one small bit features a Lego-version of the Spider-Man universe, complete with a Lego Minifig Peter Parker.
The Lego-ified version of Spider-Man and New York seen in the newly released animated film was created by 14-year-old Preston Mutanga. In the brief scene, we see a Lego version of Peter Parker as he observes a dimensional anomaly and sneaks off to the Daily Bugle’s bathroom to alert another Spider-Man about the issue. While the scene is short, it killed in my theater and it also looked as good as anything in the recent Lego films. After seeing it, a few friends of mine even commented that it must have been the same team that animated it. But nope! It was a lone teenager, actually.
Mutanga confirmed on Twitter that he animated the Lego scene in the film, and people who worked on the film took to Twitter to congratulate him on his work. His name also appears in the credits at the end of the animated superhero flick.
Preston Mutanga’s past Spider-Man and Lego creations
It’s likely that the Spider-Verse team became aware of Mutanga thanks to his past Lego projects going viral. Earlier this year, his recreation of the first Across The Spider-Verse trailer blew up on Twitter and YouTube. And in May, his Lego-animated recreation of the movie’s second trailer also went viral, even being retweeted by the official Spider-Verse Twitter account on May 25.
Kotaku reached out to Mutanga for comment.
If you are curious to see more of Mutanga’s impressive work, you can check out his YouTube channel which is packed full of Lego animations. He also has shared some behind-the-scenes videos on how he creates these impressive Lego scenes using Blender and other digital tools.