The San Francisco Chronicle takes a look at the works of Phil Tippett and his Tippett Studios which includes work on the recent J.J. Abrams monster flick Cloverfield and The Spiderwick Chronicles as well as greats Jurassic Park and the original Star Wars trilogy.
"It's not hard to find Phil Tippett, who is waiting upstairs in the main building of his special-effects studio in Berkeley. Just follow the trail of Tyrannosaurus rex models, which are scattered liberally among the memorabilia from scores of science fiction films he's contributed to since his groundbreaking work on "Star Wars."
"Little boys diverge into two groups: One goes into trucks and the other goes into dinosaurs," he says. "I went into dinosaurs."
Among the special-effects pioneers of his era, many of whom have settled in the Bay Area, Tippett is a bit of a dinosaur himself. The Berkeley native carried the stop-motion animation torch longer than anyone else, and was so despondent when computer graphics took over the industry in the early 1990s, that he became physically ill.
But a decade and a half later, his studio continues to thrive - known for its superior creature effects. Tippett Studio was responsible for the monster in "Cloverfield," and the studio teamed with Industrial Light & Magic to create various beasts for "The Spiderwick Chronicles." Tippett's resume already contained a toy chest's worth of science fiction geek icons, starting with the animated chessboard monsters in "Star Wars" and the stop-motion AT-AT snow walkers in "The Empire Strikes Back."
"Phil's like this big blustery guy - he's grumpy but he's also funny," says Spiderwick animation supervisor Todd Labonte, who has worked at Tippett Studio for almost a decade. "And then you start talking about work, and he has this great understanding of animation and animal behavior." (...continue)
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