Directing

John Stevenson

John Stevenson (born 1958) is a British filmmaker and puppeteer. Stevenson has over 40 years of experience with animation. Stevenson worked as a story artist on the feature films The Great Muppet Caper, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and Little Shop of Horrors and as a character designer and story artist on shows and films like The Dreamstone, Count Duckula, Back to the Future: The Animated Series, The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, two of the Fox Tales specials and FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue. He also worked as an art director on Back to the Future: The Animated Series and a puppeteer on James & the Giant Peach and Motion Capture Performer on The Moxy Pirate Show. In 1991, Stevenson moved to the United States, and in 1998 he was hired as a head of story at DreamWorks Animation. There he worked for many years in the art department on many films such as Shrek, Shrek 2, Madagascar and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, in addition to helming a number of episodes of their animated primetime show Father of the Pride. He worked for four years bringing Kung Fu Panda to the screen. In 2009, Stevenson was nominated for an Academy Award with Mark Osborne for Best Animated Feature for Kung Fu Panda and won the Annie Award with Osborne for Directing in a Feature Production.