Phil Tippett Sells the Workshop That Built Star Wars Walkers

Phil Tippett sold the Star Wars models in his Berkeley warehouse from August 28 through 30, emptying a 6,200-square-foot shop after Chapter 11. Collectors lined Grayson Street for AT-AT proofs, holochess pieces, and the machine tools that made them.

He is 74. He kept two Oscars. The rest of the analog shop had to move.

Three Days Emptied a 6,200-Square-Foot Shop

Clarity Estate Liquidation ran the sale at 914 Grayson St. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, and the signup sheet went out at 8 a.m. Friday with no online list. The first 50 names got in when the doors opened. Josh Roberts, who ran the floor for Clarity, said his crew would work with walkie-talkies and that the line would run down the block.

THE GRAYSON STREET SALE

• The hours: August 28, 29, and 30, each day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• The door rule: An in-person sheet at 8 a.m. Friday; the first 50 names entered at 10 a.m.
• The terms: Cash, credit, or debit, as is, no returns, and buyers had to bring their own boxes.
• The clock: Roberts said the place would look different by Saturday and that everything had to be out by Sunday.

Former staff mixed with poster hunters. Kevin K., who worked there around 1989 and built Jurassic Park jeeps, came back hoping to buy one of the vehicles he had made. Tippett said he felt a twinge of regret, then added that he had nowhere to put the work and did not like keeping it at home.

The fire sale was not a victory lap. It was inventory leaving a Chapter 11 estate, and by Sunday night the warehouse that had held 35 years of armatures and cameras was supposed to be empty.

The Animator Who Made Walkers Walk

George Lucas and Industrial Light & Magic hired Tippett in 1975 to animate the stop-motion holochess game aboard the Millennium Falcon, and three models from that scene sat on the Grayson tables. He later headed ILM animation, built go-motion for the AT-AT walkers and tauntauns in The Empire Strikes Back, and ran creatures on Return of the Jedi, including the aliens in Jabba’s palace.

FROM THE FALCON TO GRAYSON STREET

1. 1975: Lucas and ILM hire Tippett for the holochess sequence in Star Wars.
2. 1980: Go-motion puts AT-AT walkers and tauntauns on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
3. 1983: He leads creature work on Return of the Jedi and later wins a visual-effects Oscar.
4. 1984: Tippett and his wife, Jules Roman, found Tippett Studio in Berkeley.
5. 1993: Jurassic Park drops go-motion dinosaurs for CGI; he stays on and wins a second Oscar.
6. August 28, 2026: The Grayson Street liquidation opens.

The company itself opened after the original trilogy wrapped, but the founder’s hands were already on that trilogy. The shop later rebuilt holochess for The Force Awakens and took creature jobs on The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Skeleton Crew, and The Mandalorian and Grogu. The physical trail of that work was what the sale scattered.

Spielberg Put His Panic in the Script

Steven Spielberg first hired Tippett to make Jurassic Park dinosaurs with go-motion, the method that photographs a model while it is moving so the frame picks up blur. Then ILM showed Spielberg a computer T. rex. Tippett, watching the test, said, “I’ve just become extinct.” Spielberg put a version of the line in the movie, when Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm answers a paleontologist who thinks he is out of a job.

He was not out of the picture. Spielberg kept him on to supervise how the digital animals moved, and Tippett Studio’s Craig Hayes built the Dinosaur Input Device so stop-motion artists could drive software with a physical armature. That pivot is how go-motion blurred stop-motion models and then taught computers the same body sense. The second Oscar followed. The Berkeley warehouse stayed standing through digital, CGI, and, Tippett said, now AI.

The extinct line was a joke that aged into a forecast. CGI did not kill the shop in 1993. The bill arrived later, as tax credits pulled productions out of California, studios shrank their vendor lists, and a foreign buyer paid for a famous name that no longer needed a 6,200-square-foot floor.

An Indian VFX House Owns the Name Now

Phantom Digital Effects Limited, listed in India as PHANTOMFX, signed a term sheet on March 11, 2024, for an 80 percent stake at $3.75 million valuation. The buyer plans to retain the Tippett name and said Phil Tippett would stay on the board and keep making work. Tippett Studio Inc. filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California on May 1, 2024. A reorganization plan was confirmed on April 1, 2025.

THE PHANTOMFX DEAL

After the weekend, the company said on social media that it would “evolve our physical footprint and production approach, and to exit our longtime Berkeley facility,” while continuing effects and animation work. Stop-motion still matters on paper, the statement said, but a large permanent shop does not. Stages and motion-control can be rented. The Toronto office, it added, is in active production on a large feature film.

Tippett told a local reporter the collapse was slow and had many causes, including studio consolidation and tax incentives that cities and states use to steal film jobs. He also said he had “made a lot of painful decisions.” PhantomFX still uses the brand. The Berkeley floor is gone.

What Collectors Took From Grayson Street?

The three-day liquidation listing for the warehouse read like a shop manual someone had forgotten to lock. Hundreds of props, maybe thousands, sat beside welders, 3-D printers, a Worrall geared head, and a guitar. Many pieces were signed by Tippett, plus cast and crew.

WHAT LEFT THE WAREHOUSE

• Star Wars board: Three holochess models from the 1977 Falcon scene.
• Hoth hardware: A signed artist-proof AT-AT, one of four or five scanned from the original, plus an AT-ST and a Jabba the Hutt model.
• Other creatures: Starship Troopers bugs, RoboCop pieces, Mad God puppets, faces from The Haunting, and a signed Hellboy poster.
• The plant: Stop-motion rigs, motion-capture gear, mold-making tools, servers, lights, and full roll-away toolboxes.

The AT-AT on the table was not the hero miniature from 1980. Tippett said it was an artist proof scanned from that design. Even so, it was the kind of object that used to live where the people who knew how to shoot it still worked. A museum could have kept that set together. The sale did the opposite, sending walkers, chess monsters, and drill presses home with whoever showed up with a tub.

He Is Keeping the Oscars

Tippett would not sell the visual-effects Oscars for Return of the Jedi and Jurassic Park. “They’re the big-ticket items, and they were the most significant moments in my journey,” he said. A storage space still holds work for a Mad God show that opens at CoproGallery in Los Angeles on October 10. He called himself retired from the racket in one conversation and named the Twilight films as his last major project. On camera he sounded less finished.

I will die with my sword in my hand. We had almost a 40-year run. It was a good run.

Phil Tippett, visual effects artist

The name now sits on a multinational VFX roster. Toronto is shooting. The man who taught computers how dinosaurs walk still talks like a crew chief. What ended on Grayson Street is the room where those walkers could still be picked up, turned toward the light, and explained by the people who built them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Star Wars Effects Did Phil Tippett Create?

Besides the 1977 holochess, the Hoth walkers, the tauntauns, and Jabba’s palace creatures, his shop rebuilt the Falcon chess monsters for The Force Awakens and Solo, then returned for creature and mechanical work on The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Skeleton Crew, and The Mandalorian and Grogu.

Which Oscars Did Phil Tippett Win?

He won visual-effects Oscars for Return of the Jedi and Jurassic Park. He was also nominated for the dragon work in Dragonslayer (1981) and won an Emmy for the 1985 documentary Dinosaur!, a resume the sale listing summed up as stretching back to the early 1970s.

Who Bought Tippett Studio in 2024?

Phantom Digital Effects Limited, the Chennai-based company listed on India’s National Stock Exchange as PHANTOMFX, signed for 80 percent of Tippett Studio (USA and Canada). Founder Bejoy Arputharaj said Gary Mundell would stay as North America CEO, with Cliff McDowell as COO, and that offices would remain in the United States, Canada, India, Dubai, and the United Kingdom.

What Is Go-Motion Animation?

Go-motion is stop-motion with the model moved during the exposure so the photograph records blur, which is why the AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back feel heavier than classic Ray Harryhausen puppets. Tippett used the same idea on Dragonslayer before ILM’s CGI test ended the plan to shoot Jurassic Park that way.

When Did Tippett Studio File for Bankruptcy?

Tippett Studio Inc. filed Chapter 11 on May 1, 2024, in the Northern District of California, about seven weeks after the March 11 term sheet with PhantomFX. The court confirmed a reorganization plan on April 1, 2025, which set the clock for the August 2026 public sale of the Berkeley inventory.

The Oscars stay on his shelf. The walkers went out the door in plastic tubs, and the next time those shapes move on a screen, the shop that could still show you the armature will not be on Grayson Street.