Phil Tippett, the legendary animator and VFX man known for his work on films like “Star Wars,” “Jurassic Park,” and “Robocop,” is retiring and closing his studio.
Speaking to Berkleyside (via Film Stories), he says he’s “retired from the racket” and is closing his Berkeley-based studio down. Decades of props, memorabilia and art is being sold off in a two-day auction this weekend.
Tippett adds that he’s “keeping the Oscars” he won for his work on both “Return of the Jedi” and “Jurassic Park,” but with years of work being sold off he’s “made a lot of painful decisions”.
If Ray Harryhausen had a spiritual successor it would be Tippett, whose first major screen credit was his stop-motion work on “Star Wars” with Chewie’s holograpic chessboard.
He then went on to develop a smoother form of animation dubbed ‘go motion’ which was used for the four-legged AT-ATs in “The Empire Strikes Back”.
He animated the menacing ED-209 combat mech in “Robocop” and then began to incorporate computers into his workflow with “Jurassic Park” to help bring dinosaurs to life.
Other notable work include creature work on “Starship Troopers,” “Howard the Duck,” “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “Willow,” “Coneheads,” “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” the “Twilight” sequels and a stop motion rat on “Alien: Romulus”. He also won an Emmy for his work on the 1985 doco “Dinosaur!”.
He completed the film “Mad God” in 2021 after roughly 30 years in off-and-on production. In 2024, Indian company PhantomFX acquired Tippet Studio and, shortly after, financial struggles saw it file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The studio’s last piece of work was for a new “Twilight Zone” series, and he worked on scenes for both “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” and “The Mandalorian and Grogu”.
