Phil Tippett Case Study Outline

I. Introduction

• A. Thesis: Phil Tippett can be seen as an innovator in Visual Effects, taking the steps from Stopmotion Animation to Computer-generated imagery.
• B. Sub Thesis: Many of his works on creature design and character animation stand as landmark points within the film industry.

II. Body

A. Background Information

• 1. Inspiration, education
• The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
• University of California, Irvine
• 2. Career in VFX
• ILM: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
• Dragonslayer
• Return of the Jedi
• 3. Stopmotion
• Design, models, animation
• “Go-Motion” Technique

B. From Stopmotion to CGI and early Tippett Studio

• 1. Leaving ILM
• Garage Studio = Tippett Studio
• Prehistoric Beast, 10 min. experimental = first emmy
• 2. Expanding with Jon Davison
• Robocop: ED-209 robot
• Howard the Duck: Dark Overlord creatures
• 3. Stopmotion to CGI
• Steven Spielberg and Jurassic Park for Go-Motion then CG
• Supervising animation @ ILM and Tippett Studio: realistic digital dinosaurs, which could breathe, flex twitch and react. Oscar

C. Expansion of Studio and CGI facility

• 1. Starship Troopers, expanding studio, process
• 2. Films
• Digital doubles/worlds
• Hellboy
• Blade 2
• Hollow Man
• Starship Troopers 2
• The Matrix Revolutions
• Creatures/Animals
• The Spiderwick Chronicles
• Enchanted
• The Golden Compass
• Charlotte’s Web
• FX Animation/Robots
• The Stepford Wives
• Robocop 1 & 2
• Commercials
  
• 3. Phil Tippett’s “Priorities in Work”
• Craft and Skill, not tools or technology

III. Conclusion

I. Introduction and Body

• A. Thesis: Phil Tippett can be seen as an innovator in Visual Effects, taking the steps from Stopmotion Animation to Computer-generated imagery.
• B. Sub Thesis: Many of his works on creature design and character animation stand as landmark points within the film industry.

II. Body:
A. Background Information

1. The Beginning:

Phil Tippett was born in Berkeley California in 1951. At the young age of seven, Tippett was first influenced and inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Tippett realized from then on what he wanted to do, and soon completed his Bachelor’s degree in Art at the University of California, Irvine. He then began his first job at Cascade Pictures in LA, in the animation studio.


2. Career in VFX:
Tippett soon found himself at the ILM animation department with Jon Berg in 1978, working on Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Tippett used stop motion and worked on the Imperial Walkers and the Tauntaun.




In 1981, Tippett helped developed the stop motion technique “Go-Motion” for Dragonslayer. Go-Motion is the attempt to create motion blur for frames of stop motion animation. In the animations, the frames would have a very “sharp” feel to them because the subjects are still in each shot. In order to solve this problem, certain ways to create motion blur to help make the animations believable and lifelike, involved Vaseline to blur the lens or bumping the puppet, or shaking the table to create a blur as the image was being taken. The Vaseline technique was used in Star Wars: A New Hope for Luke Skywalker’s speeder as well as the endoskeleton in The Terminatior.



Dragonslayer then got him an Academy Award nomination for the insanely realistic dragon animation. Then in 1983, Tippett lead Lucasfilm’s creature shop for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and won his first Oscar in 1984.

B. From Stopmotion to early CGI

o 1. Leaving ILM

In 1983 Tippett left ILM to start his own studio, which of course was called Tippett Studios. He began his work in his garage on an experimental10-minute film called “Prehistoric Beast” which involved dinosaurs. The realism of the film’s dinosaurs, as well as the scientific theory led it to an animated documentary “Dinosaur!” on CBS in 1985. It won an Emmy for Special Visual Effects for the animated dinosaurs.



o 2. Expanding with Jon Davison

Tippett was hired in 1983 by producer Jon Davison to work on an animated robot sequence for “RoboCop”, along with Craig Hayes to design the ED-209 robot. Together Hayes and Tippett realized their ability to work together and produce highly successful projects.


Here is a video which covers the making of the ED-209 Robot with Hayes and Tippett. Hayes goes into detail about the design and reasoning behind the robot and emphasizes the way it is built to signify the fact that a person could not fit into the suit, and how the pieces of the robot would move. Tippett himself then explains about the composition of his shots, and talks about the issues behind stop motion and having to reset the characters and fixing them:





While working under Davison, Tippett was slowly involved in CGI, to supervise and give advice on how to animate the CG head of “Cain”. However due to the tight schedule, he could only give advice through written instruction.


o 3. Stopmotion to CGI


Steven Spielberg hired Tippett in 1991 to work on “Jurassic Park” for his acclaimed Go-Motion technique which can be seen within this test stop motion:



However Dennis Murren and his CGI team at ILM created test footage of a T-Rex for Spielberg—which caused him to revert from full stop motion to CGI. Once Tippett was informed he was shocked. Spielberg however kept Tippett on the job as a supervisor for his intensive knowledge in animal movement and behavior for both the Tippett and ILM studios. Tippett not only helped supervise but created animatics to further illustrate the plan of movements and shots from storyboards:





In all of Tippett and the crew he supervised, he won another Oscar for the digitally realistic dinosaurs and their animation. The breathing, the way the dinosaurs flexed and reacted all lead to the believability of the award-winning creatures.


Through out the process Tippett and Hayes developed the Digital Input Device (DID) which helped aid them through the transition from stop motion to CG animation. The DID is the use of physical character with inputs within themselves which, when animated in life, would send information to a computer which would help improve the accuracy of the animation and help save time.

C. Expansion of Studio and CGI facility

Portoflio/Projects:

The very first major project that Tippett Studios was hired for was "Starship Troopers". The movie itself was an adaptaion by Paul Verhoeven from Robert A. Heinlein's Sci-Fi novel "Starship Troopers." Tippett then brought together more than 100 animators, model makers, technicians, computer artists to expand his all-CGI facility/crew. Not only was Tippett involved with creating giantic, vicious alien arachnids, he co-directed many of the large-scale battles, pre-visualizing the creatures. The high quality work produced by the crew's work and Tippett's direction lead to a 1997 Academy Award nomination.




From 1997 and 98, Tippett supervised effects and animation for Univeral Studio's "Virus" and Disney's "My Favorite Martian". Then in 1999 worked with Craig Hayes on supervising the visual effects on Dreamwork's "The Haunting".

Films Tippett Studios has worked on since (click on film name to see fx reel or other) :

*Digital doubles/worlds*
Hellboy
Blade 2





Hollow Man
Starship Troopers 1 & 2
The Matrix Revolutions
The Haunting

*Creatures/Animals*

Cats and Dogs
Evolution
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Enchanted
The Golden Compass
Charlotte’s Web
Bedtime Stories
Men In Black 2

*FX Animation/Robots*

The Stepford Wives
Robocop 1 & 2



*Commercials*

Sav

Concept Art/Sculptures for Tippett Studios:

And here's a quick demo reel of Phil Tippett Studio. Please click here.

III. Conclusion

Tippett is not only innovative within his craft, what makes him stand out is his belief in working on his craft and skill. He is not dependent on the technology or tools, but uses it to further extend his art.

Here's a long quote about Phil Tippett and what drives his creativity and inspiration:

“Probably, to be frank, it grew out of being a child that liked to play and have imaginative scenarios that you would put together that would help you figure out other things in your life. It was using those props and effigies to create narratives. Then that gets more complicated, and you need more detail in the narrative. And you get inspired. A lot is inspired by other peoples’ work and imaginations. Like lightning rods, you never know where they are going to come from. Like inspired by the work of Harryhausen, and not knowing how that stuff was created, but just viscerally identifying with it and thinking it was just so wonderful, and learning on your own. It’s like writing. No one can tell you how; you figure it out on your own. It’s not a career path, it’s not a bunch of systems and procedures you follow to arrive at something, it’s just this really icky mess that’s kind of like the unconscious and that’s how you pull stuff together.”

- Phil Tippett