In the wake of Tippett Studios’ closure, a digital archive appears online
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
An anonymous buyer saved Tippett Studios' digital archive from private auction and posted it online.
Following Tippett Studios' closure in August 2024 and a two-day auction of its props and memorabilia, an anonymous person ('TippettFan') spotted a folder of CD-ROMs at the auction, purchased them, and uploaded the contents to the Internet Archive. The archive contains 90 .ISO disc images totaling gigabytes of files, including behind-the-scenes images from RoboCop and Starship Troopers, slides of Phil Tippett's work on Star Wars, and test clips of CGI creatures. The donor acted to preserve material they felt might otherwise vanish into private collections.
What commenters are saying
Commenters praised the anonymous preservation effort as a heroic act of digital archeology, comparing it to the Textfiles project. One noted the low-poly models visible in the archived Starship Troopers test footage. Another flagged that the Internet Archive's cross-linking for Tippett is broken, pointing to unrelated people named Tippett. A commenter who worked on Charlotte's Web recalled being awed by Tippett Studio's animatronic Templeton the rat when their own studio (Rising Sun Pictures) bid for the work but lost the character to Tippett.