Tippett Studio Archive Preserved Online
Tippett Studio, the Berkeley-based animation and effects house founded by Phil Tippett, closed in August 2026. Decades of props, memorabilia, and art were sold off in a two-day auction. There was a real fear that huge amounts of studio art would vanish into private collections and never be seen again [1].
An anonymous person, going by the name TippettFan, attended the auction, spotted a folder of CD-ROMs and other discs, and acquired it for an undisclosed sum. Rather than keep the contents, they digitized everything and uploaded it to the Internet Archive. The collection contains 90 key, non-duplicated disc images from Tippett's archives [1].
"I quickly realized that some of this information wasn't available online and might not ever be in the future in such high resolution," TippettFan wrote. "So I purchased the disc folder and digitized all of its contents" [1].
Phil Tippett is the animator whose work illuminated Star Wars, RoboCop, Starship Troopers, and countless other films. The archive contains behind-the-scenes images from RoboCop and Starship Troopers, slides of his work on the original Star Wars, test clips of CGI creatures, a 2008 interview with Tippett, and, unexpectedly, publicity stills from Catwoman [1].
The bulk of the archive is in .ISO disc image format, with gigabytes of files to download and comb through. It will likely take weeks for historians and fans to go through everything [1].
This is what digital preservation looks like when it works. One person, at one auction, decided that the contents of a folder of discs mattered more than what they paid for it. The Internet Archive did the rest. Film history that could have disappeared into a private collection is now free to browse for anyone with an internet connection [1].
Sources:
[1] Film Stories - Tippett Studio digital archive appears online
[2] Hacker News discussion (49 points)