Phil Tippett (born September 27, 1951) is an American film director and visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design, stop-motion and computerized character animation.[1][2] Over his career, he has assisted ILM and DreamWorks, and in 1984 formed his own company, Tippett Studio.
His work has appeared in movies such as the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, and RoboCop. In 2021, he released his long-gestating stop-motion film Mad God, which was funded through Kickstarter and distributed by Shudder.
In 1975, while still working at Cascade Pictures, Tippett and Jon Berg were hired by George Lucas at Industrial Light & Magic to create a stop-motion holographic chess scene for the original Star Wars film.[4] When Star Wars was being released in theatres, in 1977, Joe Dante and Jon Davison approached Tippett to create the fish for Roger Corman's Piranha. It was released in 1978, with a credit.
In 1978, Tippett headed the ILM animation department with Jon Berg for The Empire Strikes Back, released in 1980. For this film, Tippett co-developed the animation technique called go motion to animate the sinister AT-AT Imperial Walkers and the hybrid alien tauntauns. In 1981, he continued using go motion for Dragonslayer, and received his first Academy Award nomination for its extraordinarily realistic dragon animation. By 1983, Tippett led the famed Lucasfilm creature shop for Return of the Jedi, for which he won his first Oscar in 1984.
In 1984, Tippett Studio was born when Tippett left ILM and set up a studio in his garage to create a 10-minute experimental film, Prehistoric Beast. The realism of the dinosaurs it depicted and the film's reflection of contemporary scientific theory led to the 1985 CBS animated documentary Dinosaur!. The next year, in 1986, Dinosaur! earned Tippett Studio its first award, a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects.[5]
In the 1986 movie Howard the Duck, he modeled the Dark Overlord creatures. The same year, producer Jon Davison hired Tippett to create the animated robot sequences for RoboCop. The ED-209 stop-motion model was animated by Tippett[6] but designed by Craig Hayes[6] (also known as Craig Davies[7]), who also built the full size models. As one of the setpieces of the movie, the ED-209's look and animated sequences were under the close supervision of director Paul Verhoeven, who sometimes acted out the robot's movements himself. ED-209 was voiced by producer Jon Davison. The project became the start of a long and successful collaboration between Davies and Tippett.
When Tippett was told that Jurassic Park dinosaurs would be computer-generated, he was shocked, exclaiming "I've just become extinct", a line Spielberg borrows and uses in the movie.[9] Far from being extinct, Tippett evolved as stop-motion animation gave way to computer-generated imagery or CGI. Because of Tippett's background and understanding of animal movement and behavior, Spielberg kept Tippett on to supervise the animation on 50 dinosaur shots for Jurassic Park. Tippett supervised both the Tippett Studio and ILM animators, resulting in realistic digital dinosaurs that breathe, flex, twitch and react. His effort earned him a second Oscar.[10]
Work done on Jurassic Park resulted in the development by Tippett Studio's Craig Hayes of the DID (Dinosaur Input Device - as described by ILM in Disney+ documentary Light & Magic, S1 episode 6) which was pivotal in the transition from stop motion to computer generated animation in bringing creatures to life. Tippett is also the subject of a humorous internet meme regarding his credit in the film ("Dinosaur Supervisor"), which is displayed with the tagline "One job, Phil! You had one job!", implying that because he didn't supervise the dinosaurs properly, he was responsible for the on-screen deaths. Mashable interviewed Tippett in April 2014 about this meme, which he called "beyond silly" and "such a waste of time".[11]
In June 2015, after media attention due to his new credit of "Dinosaur Consultant" in Jurassic World and the ensuing deaths in the film, Tippett tweeted: "to be fair, there were a lot of dinosaurs. It was a large job."[12]
In 1995, Tippett Studio was hired to create the giant, hostile alien arachnids in Paul Verhoeven's adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's classic science fiction novel Starship Troopers. Tippett marshaled a team of 100 animators, model makers, computer artists and technicians and expanded his all-CGI facility. Because of the intensity of his involvement, and his ability to pre-visualize the hordes of teeming arachnids, Verhoeven has credited Tippett with co-directing the large-scale battle sequences for the film. The excellence of this work resulted in Tippett's sixth nomination in 1997 for an Academy Award.
During 1997–98, Tippett supervised animation and effects for Universal's Virus and Disney's My Favorite Martian. In 1998–99 he and Craig Hayes co-supervised the visual effects on Jan De Bont's The Haunting, for DreamWorks. Under Tippett and Hayes' lead, Tippett Studio created over 100 complex effects shots that expressed the horrific character of the house and the spirits that live there.
In 2000, Tippett joined director Ivan Reitman as the visual effects supervisor on the DreamWorks science fiction comedy Evolution. In just under a year, Tippett Studio designed, realized and animated over 17 extraterrestrial creatures in 175 shots.
Throughout 2001 and into 2002, Tippett changed direction to focus on developing and directing his own film. Tippett achieved this with Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, by partnering with his longtime associates, writer Ed Neumeier and producer Jon Davison, with whom he worked on the original Starship Troopers and Robocop.
Mad God
In 1990, Tippett began work on an independent animated film, Mad God; but as he became involved in establishing his own studio, he set the project aside. He returned to the project in 2010, but did not have the budget to complete it, so he started a Kickstarter with a goal of $40,000. On June 16, 2012, the project was successfully funded, exceeding the goal and obtaining $124,156.[13]
The film was first screened December 11, 2021 and continued screening through mid-2022.[14] It took 30 years to complete. A year before it was finished, Tippett had a mental breakdown, causing him to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.[15]
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction action film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Gerald R. Molen, and starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough. It is the first installment in the Jurassic Park franchise, and the first film in the original Jurassic Park trilogy, and is based on Michael Crichton's 1990 novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Crichton and David Koepp. The film is set on the fictional island of Isla Nublar, off Central America's Pacific Coast near Costa Rica, where a wealthy businessman John Hammond (Attenborough), and a team of genetic scientists have created a wildlife park of de-extinct dinosaurs. When industrial sabotage leads to a catastrophic shutdown of the park's power facilities and security precautions, a small group of visitors, including Hammond's grandchildren, struggle to survive and escape the now perilous island.
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects, computer animation and stereo conversion digital studio that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began production on the original Star Wars, now the fourth episode of the Skywalker Saga.
Dinosaur is a 2000 American live-action/animated adventure film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation in association with The Secret Lab, and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton and produced by Pam Marsden, from a screenplay written by John Harrison, Robert Nelson Jacobs, and Walon Green, and a story by the trio alongside Zondag and Thom Enriquez. It features the voices of D. B. Sweeney, Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis, Max Casella, Hayden Panettiere, Samuel E. Wright, Julianna Margulies, Peter Siragusa, Joan Plowright, and Della Reese. The story follows a young Iguanodon who was adopted and raised by a family of lemurs on a tropical island. They are forced to the mainland by a catastrophic meteor impact; setting out to find a new home, they join a herd of dinosaurs heading for the "Nesting Grounds", but must contend with the group's harsh leader, as well as external dangers such as predatory Carnotaurus.
Go motion is a variation of stop motion animation which incorporates motion blur into each frame involving motion. It was co-developed by Industrial Light & Magic and Phil Tippett. Stop motion animation can create a distinctive and disorienting staccato effect because the animated object is perfectly sharp in every frame, since each frame is shot with the object perfectly still. Real moving objects in similar scenes have motion blur because they move while the camera's shutter is open. Filmmakers use a variety of techniques to simulate motion blur, such as moving the model slightly during the exposure of each film frame, or placing a glass plate smeared with petroleum jelly in front of the camera lens to blur the moving areas.
Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy is a 2004 documentary film directed by Kevin Burns and narrated by Robert Clotworthy. It documents the making of the original Star Wars trilogy: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983), and their impact on popular culture.
Dennis Muren, A.S.C is an American film visual effects artist and supervisor. He has worked on the films of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron, among others, and has won nine Oscars in total: eight for Best Visual Effects and a Technical Achievement Academy Award. The Visual Effects Society has called him "a perpetual student, teacher, innovator, and mentor."
James Danforth is an American stop-motion animator, known for model-animation, matte painting, and for his work on When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), a theme-sequel to Ray Harryhausen's One Million Years B.C. (1967). He later went on to work with Ray Harryhausen on the film Clash of the Titans (1981) to mainly do the animation of the winged horse Pegasus.
David W. Allen was an American film and television stop motion model (puppet) animator.
Tippett Studio is an American visual effects and computer animation company specializing in computer graphics (CG) for films and television commercials. The studio has created visual effects and animations on over fifty feature films and commercials, garnering an Academy Award, four Clio Awards and two Emmy Awards. The company currently consists of approximately 150 employees, with offices located in Berkeley, California.
Piranha is a 1978 American horror film directed and co-edited by Joe Dante from a screenplay by John Sayles, based on a story by Richard Robinson and Sayles. The film stars Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies, Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn, Barbara Steele, and Dick Miller. It tells the story of a river being infested by lethal, genetically altered piranha, threatening the lives of the local inhabitants and the visitors to a nearby summer resort.
Dinosaur! is a 1985 American television documentary film about dinosaurs. It was first broadcast in the United States on November 5, 1985, on CBS. Directed by Robert Guenette and written by Steven Paul Mark, Dinosaur! was hosted by American actor Christopher Reeve, who some years before had played the leading role in Superman.
Prehistoric Beast is a ten-minute-long experimental animated feature film conceived, supervised and directed by Phil Tippett in 1984. This sequence is the first film produced by the Tippett Studio, founded by Tippett. Made with the go motion animation technique, scenes from Prehistoric Beast were included in the 1985 full-length documentary Dinosaur!, first aired on CBS in the United States on November 5, 1985. On April 2011, the Tippett Studio had published on its YouTube official channel a digital restoration of the short.
James Morris is an American film producer, production executive and visual effects producer. He is currently general manager and president of Pixar. Previously, he held key positions at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for 17 years.
Creature animation is a specialised part of the animation process which involves bringing realistic animals and creatures to life. It is often distinguished from character animation, which involves breathing life into animated characters and creating the illusion of thought, feeling and emotion.
Steven "Spaz" Williams is a Canadian special effects artist, animator, and film and commercials director.
Production of the 2015 film Jurassic World was stalled for years in development hell while the film's storyline underwent numerous revisions. Development of the film, known then as Jurassic Park IV, began in 2001. William Monahan was announced as screenwriter in 2002, and the film was scheduled for a 2005 release. When Monahan left to work on another project, he was replaced in 2004 by John Sayles. By 2005, the start of production had stalled, as executive producer Steven Spielberg was not satisfied with any of the script drafts. In 2006, Jurassic Park III director Joe Johnston was set to direct the film. After missing a 2008 release, Johnston and Spielberg intended to work on the film following the completion of their own respective film projects. Writer Mark Protosevich was hired in 2011, although two story treatments by him were rejected.
Jurassic Park, later also referred to as Jurassic World, is an American science fiction adventure media franchise. It focuses on the cloning of dinosaurs through ancient DNA, extracted from mosquitoes that have been fossilized in amber. The franchise explores the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering, and the morals behind de-extinction.
Mad God is a 2021 American adult stop-motion animated experimental horror film written, produced, and directed by Phil Tippett. Completed in 2021, it was produced over a period of 30 years.
The special effects of the 1997 American military science fiction action film Starship Troopers were initially developed by visual-effects company Tippett Studio and Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI). However, the scale of the project and management issues at SPI led to many of the required effects being delegated to several other companies, including Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Boss Film Studios, Visual Concepts Engineering (VCE), Amalgamated Dynamics, and Mass. Illusion. Of the film's $100-$110million budget, about half was afforded to the film's 500 special effects shots.
Rexy is the colloquial nickname for a fictional Tyrannosaurus that appears throughout the Jurassic Park franchise. She first appeared in Michael Crichton's 1990 novel Jurassic Park, and made its onscreen debut in the 1993 film adaptation, directed by Steven Spielberg. She returns in the 2015 film Jurassic World and its sequels, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022).
↑ "Outstanding Special Visual Effects". 38th Primetime Emmy Awards – September 21, 1986. Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 14 September 2016.
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