Tippett Studios was another highlight stop on the Animation Show of Shows tour. It seems to be a slightly lesser known studio but they have a really impressive history with blockbuster credits.
Phil Tippett was one of the original stop motion animators on the original Star Wars films. He is best known for the Holoboard chess match creature animation. After Star Wars he made a short film and established Tippett Studio which is known for two specialties, creepy crawly villainous monsters (Starship Troopers) and cuddly fuzzy cute characters like the teddy bear in Ted.
I worked with Phil Tippett back in '06 when I was on the Pre-viz team for Halon Entertainment on the fantasy film Spiderwick Chronicles.
It was cool to finally see the Tippett location in San Francisco. It's got a really charming garage studio vibe to it. Hidden and recluse, you really wouldn't recognize it as a Hollywood studio from the outside. But they have so many original maquettes from all of the coolest films that people grew up watching.
Star Wars
Robocop
Jurassic Park
The Dinosaur Input Devices were how they animated on Jurassic Park, a kind of digital stop motion hybrid, they used VGA input plugs to connect to ancient computer systems. Cutting edge technology at that time.
Starship Troopers.
More recent blockbusters like Hellboy
And a gold mine of other maquettes...
After the screening of our films, each director in attendance got to speak at length about their films, revealing a lot of background information. it was really great to get insight on the films of Theodore Ushev's Gloria Victoria, Chris Landreth's Subconscious Password and Edmunds Jansens International Father's Day.
We then got an exclusive sneak peak of Phil Tippett's latest short film and then we hung out with him and all of the Tippett artists at a local gourmet pizza joint after.
It was an unforgettable experience!
