22 Facts About Phil Tippett

Phil Tippett was born on September 27,1951 and is an American movie director and Oscar and Emmy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design, stop-motion and computerized character animation.

Phil Tippett's work has appeared in movies such as the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, and RoboCop.

When he was seven, Phil Tippett saw Ray Harryhausen's special effects classic, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and his life's direction was set.

Phil Tippett completed a bachelor's degree in art at the University of California, Irvine, and went to work at the animation studio Cascade Pictures in Los Angeles.

When Star Wars was being released on theatres, in 1977, Phil Tippett was approached by Joe Dante and Jon Davison to create the fish for Roger Corman's Piranha.

In 1978, Phil Tippett headed the ILM animation department with Jon Berg for The Empire Strikes Back, released in 1980.

In 1981, Phil Tippett continued using go motion for Dragonslayer, and received his first Academy Award nomination for the extraordinarily realistic dragon animation.

In 1984, Phil Tippett Studio was born when Phil Tippett left ILM and set up a studio in his garage to create a 10-minute experimental film called Prehistoric Beast.

In 1986, producer Jon Davison hired Phil Tippett to create the animated robot sequences for RoboCop.

The ED-209 stop-motion model was animated by Phil Tippett but designed by Craig Hayes, who built the full size models.

Phil Tippett modeled the Dark Overlord creatures seen in Howard the Duck.

In 1991, Phil Tippett was hired to create the dinosaur effects for the Steven Spielberg blockbuster Jurassic Park using his go motion technique made famous in the film Dragonslayer.

When Phil Tippett was told that Jurassic Park dinosaurs would be computer-generated, he was shocked, exclaiming "I've just become extinct", a line Spielberg borrows and uses in the movie.

Phil Tippett supervised both the Phil Tippett Studio and ILM animators, resulting in realistic digital dinosaurs that breathe, flex, twitch and react.

In 1995, Tippett Studio was hired to create the giant, hostile alien arachnids in Paul Verhoeven's adaptation of Robert A Heinlein's classic science fiction novel Starship Troopers.

Phil Tippett marshaled a team of 100 animators, model makers, computer artists and technicians and expanded his all-CGI facility.

In 2000, Phil Tippett joined director Ivan Reitman as the visual effects supervisor on the DreamWorks science fiction comedy Evolution.

In just under a year, Phil Tippett Studio designed, realized and animated over 17 extraterrestrial creatures in 175 shots.

Phil Tippett achieved this with Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, by partnering with his longtime associates, writer Ed Neumeier and producer Jon Davison, with whom he worked on the original Starship Troopers and Robocop.

In 1990, Phil Tippett began work on an independent project entitled Mad God but during the rise of his studio, the project was dropped.

In 2010, Mad God was brought back up, but Phil Tippett did not have the budget for the film, so he started a Kickstarter with a goal of $40,000.

The film took 30 years to complete, and a year before it was finished, Phil Tippett had a mental breakdown, causing him to be admitted to a psychiatric ward.