A digital archive preserving the stop motion work of Phil Tippett and the now-closed Tippett Studios has been established online. The studio, based in Berkeley and founded by Phil Tippett, announced its closure in August due to ongoing financial difficulties, officially shutting down on August 28. During the closure, decades of props, memorabilia, and art were auctioned off over two days.
Concerns arose that significant amounts of artwork stored at the studio would be lost to private collections. Phil Tippett is known for his contributions to films such as Star Wars, RoboCop, and Starship Troopers. However, an anonymous individual attending the auction acquired a folder containing CD-ROMs and other discs, which they later digitized and uploaded to the Internet Archive.
The donor, who identifies as 'TippettFan', stated, "I quickly realized that some of this information wasn’t available online and might not ever be in the future in such high resolution." The archive includes .ISO image files from 90 unique discs, featuring behind-the-scenes images from various films, including test clips of CGI creatures and a 2008 interview with Phil Tippett. The collection contains gigabytes of files, with detailed filenames describing the contents.
Historians and fans are expected to spend considerable time reviewing the archive, which offers a wealth of film history. The donor's efforts have been acknowledged, along with Brandon Sheffield for promoting the archive on BlueSky.