As part of the promotion for my kickstarter campaign I decided to pay tribute to special effects maestro Phil Tippett. I’m sure that some of you out there will have already worked out that his surname provides the inspiration for the picture book’s title and therefore it’s eponymous titular protagonist. But for those of you who hadn’t I wanted to explain a little bit about the man and the influence he’s had on my work.
I first became aware of him in 1984 whilst watching a documentary called Star Wars to Jedi and for some reason his name stuck in my head. Now I really can’t remember if I was aware that he worked on Dragonslayer, it’s possible I knew this but pre internet days the information I had on him was pretty sketchy. That all changed one day in 1987 (I’d started perusing film magazines by then) when an article in Cinefantastique caught my eye.
CINEFANTASTIQUE January 1987
There was that name again, Tippett, above what looked to me like quite a dinky little robot. In all honesty I was a bit perplexed as to why someone associated with Star Wars, the biggest franchise of all time, was doing animation in this Judge Dredd clone directed by some crazy Dutchman I’d never heard of. Thankfully my preconceptions were put to bed with the entrance of ED-209. I guess I was old enough to appreciate the craft of film making a little more and the work that would have gone into creating such shots. Moreover I was struck with how much personality he’d projected onto this lumbering hulk of metal: it’s birdlike indecision when reaching the stairs and the resulting full blown temper tantrum after falling down them.
From that point onwards Phil Tippett became my own personal touchstone for creature design. Even to this day it’s practically impossible for me to draw a monster or robot without reflecting on some of his wonderful characters from the past. And of course I’m hoping that the robot designs for my picture book will in some small way pay tribute to his legacy. But until then here are four of my favourites.
It’s probably too late to include this artwork as part of the pledges. But I may print a very small batch of these cards and just give them out randomly with the books or to those people who write nice things and help to promote the kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/89442931/tippett-a-picture-book-by-jonathan-howard
Obviously film is a collaborative medium and whilst I’m giving the credit for this awesomeness solely to Mr Tippett no doubt others will have worked on the design, modelling, painting, texturing rigging, lighting, animation, puppeteering and all the other things that helped create these slices of movie magic.
