{"id":754169,"date":"2026-08-30T03:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T03:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/754169\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T03:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T03:14:12","slug":"star-wars-legend-phil-tippett-shutters-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/754169\/","title":{"rendered":"“Star Wars” Legend Phil Tippett Shutters Studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Lucasfilm<\/p>\n

Phil Tippett, the legendary animator and VFX man known for his work on films like \u201cStar Wars,\u201d \u201cJurassic Park,\u201d and \u201cRobocop,\u201d is closing his longtime Berkley studio.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Berkleyside (via Film Stories<\/a>), he says he\u2019s \u201cretired from the racket\u201d and is closing that studio down. Decades of props, memorabilia and art is being sold off in a two-day auction this weekend.<\/p>\n

Tippett adds that he\u2019s \u201ckeeping the Oscars\u201d he won for his work on both \u201cReturn of the Jedi\u201d and \u201cJurassic Park,\u201d but with years of work being sold off he\u2019s \u201cmade a lot of painful decisions\u201d. While the original article indicates he\u2019s retiring, he tells CBS News<\/a> he plans to continue working: \u201cI will die with my sword in my hand. We had almost a 40-year run. It was a good run.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Ray Harryhausen had a spiritual successor, it would be Tippett, whose first major screen credit was his stop-motion work on \u201cStar Wars\u201d with Chewie\u2019s holograpic chessboard. <\/p>\n

He then went on to develop a smoother form of animation dubbed \u2018go motion\u2019 which was used for the four-legged AT-ATs in \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back\u201d.<\/p>\n

He animated the menacing ED-209 combat mech in \u201cRobocop\u201d and then began to incorporate computers into his workflow with \u201cJurassic Park\u201d to help bring dinosaurs to life. <\/p>\n

Other notable work include creature work on \u201cStarship Troopers,\u201d \u201cHoward the Duck,\u201d \u201cHoney, I Shrunk the Kids,\u201d \u201cWillow,\u201d \u201cConeheads,\u201d \u201cThe Spiderwick Chronicles,\u201d the \u201cTwilight\u201d sequels and a stop motion rat on \u201cAlien: Romulus\u201d. He also won an Emmy for his work on the 1985 doco \u201cDinosaur!\u201d.<\/p>\n

He completed the film \u201cMad God\u201d 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\u2019s last piece of work before shuttering was for a new \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucasfilm Phil Tippett, the legendary animator and VFX man known for his work on films like \u201cStar Wars,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[94966,96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-754169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bigslider","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}