Phil Tippett

Phil Tippett
Tippett (left) with Dennis Muren at a screening of Jurassic Park 3D in 2013.
Born	(1951-09-27) September 27, 1951 (age 65) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Occupation	director, producer

Phil Tippett (born September 27, 1951, in Berkeley, California) is an American movie director and a visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation.

Tippett was born in Berkeley, California. When he was seven, Tippett saw Ray Harryhausen's special effects classic, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and his life's direction was set. 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.

In 1975, while still working at Cascade Pictures, Phil Tippett and Jon Berg were hired by George Lucas at Industrial Light & Magic to create a stop-motion miniature chess scene for the first Star Wars film. When Star Wars was being released on theatres, in 1977, Tippett was approached by Joe Dante and Jon Davison to create the fish for Roger Corman's Piranha (released in 1978, although Tippett was not credited in the film). That year, 1978, Tippett headed the ILM animation department with Jon Berg for The Empire Strikes Back (released in 1980). For this film, Tippett co-developed the animation technique called go motion to animate the sinister AT-AT Imperial Walkers and the hybrid alien tauntauns. In 1981 Tippett continued using go motion for Dragonslayer, and received his first Academy Award nomination for the extraordinarily realistic dragon animation. By 1983, Tippett led the famed Lucasfilm creature shop for Return of the Jedi for which he was awarded his first Oscar in 1984.