A model of the Star Wars AT-AT Imperial Walker signed by Phil Tippett, up for grabs at Studio Tippett’s fire sale starting Friday. Credit: Clarity Estate Liquidation
Perhaps you’re in the market for an Imperial Walker? Or the head of a wampa, the furry white creature that menaced Luke Skywalker on the ice planet of Hoth?
Friday might be your lucky day.
After four decades in West Berkeley, legendary effects pioneer Phil Tippett is shutting down his namesake studio, and he’s got plenty of stuff to unload, including pieces related to his work for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Paul Verhoeven. On Aug. 28-29-30, Clarity Estate Liquidation is auctioning off just about everything not nailed down, including artifacts related to some of Hollywood’s most iconic films.
“I’m keeping the Oscars,” said Tippett, 74, when Berkeleyside visited him recently in his studio, referring to his Academy Awards for special effects in “Return of the Jedi” and “Jurassic Park.”
Models, movie posters, film equipment, story boards and much more will be available to buy at the Tippett Studio fire sale Aug. 28-29-30. Credit: Clarity Estate Liquidation
With his grizzled white beard and faded cut-off black t-shirt, Tippett looks like a biker ready to sell his chopper. He didn’t so much leave Hollywood as watch the movie business recede into the distance. “I’m retired from the racket,” he said. “My last major project was the ‘Twilight’ series.”
Phil Tippett, master animator and Oscar winner, who was born in Berkeley and founded his namesake studio there in his garage in 1984, says he’s “retired from the racket.” Credit: Courtesy Phil Tippett
But what a ride. He’s a survivor who got his start back in the analog days, then pivoted to “digital, CGI and now AI,” he said. Over the years the studio rented space as needed. “But it’s so cyclical we didn’t want to buy more space,” he said. The company sold another West Berkeley facility on Sixth Street years ago.
This studio is packed with models and memorabilia, film gear and production books with story boards and notes. The Imperial Walker model bearing his signature is “one of four or five artist proofs scanned from the original,” he said. There are terrifying faces from the remake of “The Haunting” emerging from the walls, hundreds of figurines, dozens of masks, and enough film posters to provide the décor for a sci-fi/horror themed hotel (including an autographed “Hellboy” one-sheet).
“It’s going to be a crazy scene on Friday, with people lined up down the block,” said Clarity Estate’s Josh Roberts. “We’ve been spending all week setting up. When the sale happens it’s very intense. My crew is out on the floor with walkie-talkies.”
The fire sale is part of the studio’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Tippett said the studio’s demise was a prolonged affair and there were numerous causes, including the consolidation of Hollywood studios and tax incentives offered by cities and states competing for film production business. In 2024 the Indian company PhantomFX acquired Tippett Studio, but that didn’t prevent Chapter 11.
He hasn’t shed everything, “but I’ve made a lot of painful decisions,” he said. There’s a storage space filled with pieces and artifacts for a Los Angeles exhibition that opens at the CoproGallery Oct. 10 focusing on his disturbing 2021 stop-motion masterpiece “Mad God.” There are also plenty of pieces from “Mad God” on sale, along with grips, lights, lenses and cameras.
“By Saturday this place will looking completely different,” Roberts said. “By Sunday they’ve got to move everything out of the building.”
Wrapping up four decades of cinematic magic is one special effect Tippett was hoping to avoid.
The sale, at Studio Tippett, 914 Grayson St., kicks off on Friday, Aug. 28 and runs through the weekend, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. Credit: Clarity Estate Liquidation
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