Industrial Light & Magic animation supervisor Hal Hickel approached Jon Favreau’s “The Mandalorian and Grogu” with a deceptively simple question: “What would Phil do?”
The Phil in question was stop-motion pioneer Phil Tippett, whose work on the original “Star Wars” trilogy provided a template for everything from lumbering AT-AT walkers to a spectacular battle involving two giant droids animated by hand.
Credit: Davide Abbatescianni
The softer side of that characterization even included an homage to Hayao Miyazaki’s “My Neighbor Totoro”: Dave Filoni drew Grogu asleep on Rotta’s chest during a production meeting. “That’s a ‘Totoro’ moment, for sure,” Hickel confirmed.
The experience is now especially poignant: Tippett Studio has since left its longtime Berkeley facility, though the company continues operating elsewhere. “Sitting on the Tippett stage, which we all know now is no more, doing stop-motion on a ‘Star Wars’ film will probably be forever the pinnacle of my career,” Hickel said. “And I don’t mean that lightly.”
