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I recall my first live action blockbuster I got a vfx job on, "Charlotte's Web".
Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) in Australia had pitched for Templeton, the rat. But Templeton had already been given to Tippet.
So RSP got the option to either take Charlotte, the spider, or get no work on the show at all. A scary proposition for a company of 20 people at the time that only done hard-surface work and no creatures until then. They hired a lot of people in a short period and I was lucky to be one of them.
The work coming out of Tippet we saw in the first dailies of Templeton intercut with our work was jaw-dropping. [1]
I also remember feeling weirdly proud to work on a show that had Tippet involed because of Star Wars ofc. But more so because of Starship Troopers which I love. I can't think of any other movie that manages to be an in-your-face critique of facism while at the same time scoring as a "quality" popcorn flic.
I recall Tippet's test footage for the Arachnids being on the Softimage showreel years before that movie was released. [2]
There's something both wonderful and slightly terrifying about decades of film history being preserved because one person at an auction happened to notice a folder full of old CD-ROMs
Tippett Studios or Phil’s name should probably be in the title here to give this the audience it deserves. He’s a legend and many many nerds will know his name.
I disagree. Putting his name in the title would just bring in the people who already know him. The ones who'd benefit are those who've seen his creatures without ever knowing who built them. "Digital archive of animated materials" is arguably the better hook.
Such a shame. It was an amazing place to work. I remember stripping down a defunct Zambeel storage system to harvest drives which we then used to cobble together a ~terabyte desk side NAS. It was for one person to house assets for a particular shot on Matrix Revolutions without melting the network.
Small nitpick: it's Tippett Studio, singular, even though the headline says Studios. IIRC their Matrix work was mostly the Sentinels and the Zion dock siege in Revolutions, not so much the first two films. I could be wrong though.
Are those the final render models though? Animators usually worked on low-res proxies so the rig stayed interactive, then the high-res versions got swapped in at render time. Has anyone checked whether the detailed ones are in the archive?
Hosting 90GB on Internet Archive is step one. Mirroring the torrents is step two, before copyright lawyers notice the auction bypass. Seed it while it exists.
I downloaded the whole thing immediately because I too fear the copyright vultures. But if it's really 90 GB, I'm missing where to get the other 40 GB.
I did not previously know about this closure or the auction. However, I am super sad to learn this was a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and not just an intentional retirement.
Probably just fuzzy matching on the name. Searching the full "Tippett Studio" with the double t should narrow it, though I haven't checked whether their index treats the studio as a creator or a subject. Archive metadata is pretty inconsistent about that.
Looking at some of the materials, they seem to have been doing CGI work, too, in later years.
I do mourn the lack of physical special effects, models, and puppets, though. The studios try to convince us that we couldn't tell the difference, but it's pretty obvious.
I already liked Project Hail Mary a lot after having seen it, but my respect for it went through the roof when I saw the role names in the closing credits: model makers, metal workers, puppeteers, animatronics...
We shut down a small company years ago and the old project drives nearly went in a dumpster. Nobody's job was to keep them. Archives like this usually survive because someone cared on their own time, not because anyone planned it.
I think the context makes it clear. But, equally, you can argue that the CD format was physically locking the files to that binder, but now the data is digitised it is more easily accessed and shared.
Rising Sun Pictures (RSP) in Australia had pitched for Templeton, the rat. But Templeton had already been given to Tippet.
So RSP got the option to either take Charlotte, the spider, or get no work on the show at all. A scary proposition for a company of 20 people at the time that only done hard-surface work and no creatures until then. They hired a lot of people in a short period and I was lucky to be one of them.
The work coming out of Tippet we saw in the first dailies of Templeton intercut with our work was jaw-dropping. [1]
I also remember feeling weirdly proud to work on a show that had Tippet involed because of Star Wars ofc. But more so because of Starship Troopers which I love. I can't think of any other movie that manages to be an in-your-face critique of facism while at the same time scoring as a "quality" popcorn flic.
I recall Tippet's test footage for the Arachnids being on the Softimage showreel years before that movie was released. [2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYFQ9vVqiMA
[2] https://youtu.be/IPcFGleYsgs?t=73