Last August, Hollywood special effects legend and besieged animator Phil Tippett closed his studio. Based in Berkeley, California, Tippett and his team helped shape blockbusters like Jurassic Park, RoboCop, The Matrix and more. Tippett is most renowned for his work on Star Wars, using stop motion wizardry to bring numerous alien beasts to life. After a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, he was forced to close shop, liquidating his house of Hollywood history. Thankfully, despite the tragedy, it seems that much of this master work won’t be lost to time.
This week, stirring began circulating around movie buffs about a trove of never before seen materials regarding Star Wars, Hellboy, Starship Troopers and beyond. It appears that one ultra fan who attended Tippett’s fire sale decided to do the lord’s work. Purchasing a large CD binder of what has turned out to be files spanning the effects maker’s impressive filmography, the individual has uploaded the lot to the last good website, the Internet Archive.
“I quickly realized that some of this information wasn’t available online and might not ever be in the future in such high resolution,” writes the archivist. “So I purchased the disc folder and digitized all of its contents. What you have here are .ISO image files of the 90 key, non-duplicated discs from Tippett’s archives.”
In the cache is an impressive gallery of new glimpses at vigorously studied classics. Amusing behind the scenes glances at A New Hope’s famous cantina scene and stills of stop motion and puppet creatures, from the hologram chess pieces to the trash room eyeball. The collection goes well beyond a galaxy far, far away, like construction of RoboCop’s ED-209, Abe Sapien’s skin textures, wireframe files from Jurassic Park and photos from Ray Harryhausen’s 90th birthday.
The Internet Archive is no stranger to leaked lost media, from video games and film alike, but the specific context to this upload is bittersweet. Down but not out, Tippett has stated that he’s not quite ready to retire, even though his passion project Mad God brought him to hell and back. As Hollywood drifts further away from practical effects, the physical creatures get to continue on, whether in a museum or a burned CD-R.
