Phil Tippett to work on new Star Wars film!

Phil Tippett animates an At-At on set for the Empire Strikes Back

If you are a Star Wars fan and love stop motion, chances are you know about the contributions of Phil Tippett. Phil animated on iconic animation sequences and even created animatronic and monster suits too. This was all mostly during his work with ILM (Industrial Light and Magic). But he also worked on the newly released Disney+ Star Wars projects too.

From what Collider recently reported, Director Jon Favreau was very happy with what Phil made on Skeleton Crew recently and asked Phil to work on the new feature. The Mandalorian and Grogu (see leaked trailer here) is the current title and Jon had this to say about Phil's involvement:

"the team has more flexibility to experiment and fine-tune the visuals. “Even though we were able to do it for Skeleton Crew, we had to turn around very quickly and be very surgical and strategic about it. Here we have a longer run, so we could plan longer and incorporate a lot of different techniques that we didn’t have the luxury to do on the series,”

Could this mean that there will be go-motion? A term Phil coined in the 80's that adds motion blur? Or perhaps they will be able to make more intricate sets or maybe even something we've never seen before? It is all very hush hush at the moment, but it's great to know stop motion will once again be on the big screen!