After his exceptional work in episodes IV, V and VI, Tippett returns to the fray in ‘Skeleton Crew’, Jon Watts’ series for Disney+
CGI isn’t your thing, do you miss the era of practical effects and are you a ‘Star Wars’ fan? Well, I bring the best news that you could bring to your retinas. They are related to ‘Skeleton Crew’, the new series from the universe created by George Lucas led by Jon Watts, responsible for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy, and with the way you will approach some of your visual challenges.
The return of the king —of go motion—
As reported exclusively by the people of Collider, Watts has counted on none other than the maestro Phil Tippett, who three years ago released his glorious stop-motion odyssey ‘Mad God’, to shape some passages of a series that has embraced new technologies and old school techniques in equal measure. This is what the director said.
“I’ve been able to use all the cool stuff in my Star Wars series. We’ve had pre-vis, MOCAP, we’ve recorded in the Volume, we’ve done everything. But the most fun thing is that we’ve also used old school techniques. We’ve I had Phil Tippett doing stop-motion. We did matte paintings, real matte paintings, the old way. We brought a painter from ILM out of retirement to come and do it. For me, that’s all fun, but it’s just another tool, and it depends on how you use it.”
Tippett, in addition to having worked on productions such as ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘Starship Troopers’ and ‘Robocop’, and having become part of the Harryhausen Hall of Fame in 2022, He is more than familiar with the ‘Star Wars’ universe, in which he actively participated in the production of the original trilogyafter George Lucas hired him at Industrial Light & Magic to create the iconic holographic chess game scene in ‘A New Hope’ in stop-motion.
Three years later, Tippett rose at ILM to become head of the animation department alongside Jon Berg in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, where he developed the technique known as go motion—roughly, stop motion with motion blur—to give life to the mammoth AT-ATs and tauntauns. In ’83 he led the creature department of ‘Return of the Jedi’, winning the first Oscar of his career after his unsuccessful nomination for ‘Dragon of the Lake of Fire’.
To see how Tippett’s new job turned out we will have to wait until this christmaswhen ‘Skeleton Crew’ will arrive on Disney+ with its youthful galactic adventure.
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