John Stevenson

John Stevenson is an English puppeteer and animation filmmaker. Stevenson is best known for his directing the most successful animated movie all times, Kung Fu Panda Kung Fu Panda Legend of awesomeness is a Popular T >> Read More... . Stevenson has a lot of experience in the animation field. He is a veteran of DreamWorks PDI, and he started his entertainment industry known as The Muppet Show.

Born in the year 1958, Stevenson started his career in the film industry as a story artist. He was a story artist for the movie Labyrinth, The Great Muppet Caper, Little Shop of Horrors and The Dark Crystal. After working as a story artist for a short period, Stevenson started working as a character designer. He designed characters for a lot of movies some of which include Count Duckula, The Twisted Tale of Felix the Cat, The Dreamstone, Back to the Future: The Animated Series. He also designed a character for two episodes of the series Fox Tales and FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue. After that, he shifted his career from being a story artist to an art director.

He worked as an art director in the movie Back to the Future: The Animated Series and also worked as a puppeteer on the show, James, and the Giant Peach. He worked as a Motion Capture performer in the animated series The Moxy Pirate Show. After gaining some experience in The Great Britain, Stevenson moved to the United States in the year 1991. He had to struggle for work in the beginning but later in the year 1998, Stevenson was hired by the DreamWorks Animation as the head of the story.

He worked on many successful projects. Some of his mentionable works are in the movie Shrek, Sinbad: Legends of the Seven Seas, Madagascar and Shrek 2. He also designed some character for the primetime animated series, Father of the Pride. He worked for four years with the DreamWorks Animation. After that, he directed his first movie named Kung Fu Panda.

The movie was a huge success worldwide and broke many records all over the world. In 2009, Stevenson was even nominated for the Best Animated Feature for Kung Fu Panda at the Academy Awards. He even won the Annie Award for Kung Fu Panda. In the year 2011, Stevenson directed a short animated movie series for the Coca-Cola Company named The Polar Bears.

The series was produced by Tony Scott and Ridley. Later in the year 2012, Stevenson started working for the Rocket Pictures as a director. He directed the sequel to the movie Gnomeo and Juliet and Gnomeo and Juliet: Sherlock Gnomes. The second movie is yet to release in the year 2018. Stevenson is currently working on a project, directing the movie He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He is also working on projects like The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Rotten Island and Alien’s Rock.

Another Version

 
John Stevenson is from England, United Kingdom. He is a British Animation Filmmaker and Puppeteer.  He has 30 years of work experience in the field of animation. Stevenson began his career through a Muppet show which was a ‘DreamWorks’ project, part of Pacific Data Image team. He used to sketch the outline of the story, for the feature films.

Stevenson worked for feature films like, ‘The Great Muppet Caper’, ‘The Dark Crystal’, ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. The characters he created and story outline he sketched are, ‘Dream Stone’ which was running from the period of 1990 to 1995. ‘Count Duckula’ which was a dark animated fiction, was telecast from the period of 1988 to 1993. John Stevenson imagination have ruled the kids over a period. As his next step in his career, he joined hands with ‘Cartoon Network’ produced by Colossal Pictures for ‘The Moxy Pirate Show’ which was the happening period of Millennium (1993- 2000).

Later then, he was hired for Art Department at ‘DreamWorks Animation’, the  United States in 1998.  He had been working there for many years giving pictures like, ‘Shrek’ (2001) which was animated fantasy film followed by ‘Shrek 2’ (2004). Then he worked on ‘Madagascar’ (2005) and ‘Sinbad: Legend of Seven Seas’ (2003), an animated adventure film.  

‘Kun Fu Panda’ for which the entire team worked for four years was released on 2008. Stevenson won the ‘Annie Award for Best Directing in an Animated Feature Production’. The entire crew took home ‘Annie Awards’, for what they had invested in four years. Stevenson directed a movie for Coca-Cola titled as ‘Polar bears’ which was running around seven and half minutes produced by Ridley and Tony Scott. 
John Stevenson and Rocket Pictures were working together for animation movie, ‘Gnomeo & Juliet’ (2012 ) and now they are planning to have a sequel of it titled as ‘ Gnomeo & Juliet: Sherlock Gnomes,' which is slated to be released by 2018. In 2014, it was announced that he will be directing for Universal Pictures, an animated feature film scheduled for releasing on 2016.