38 years for a Game of Chess

I was 14 years old when I first saw Star Wars.

It was 1977 and I was sitting in the fabulous UA150 Cinema in Seattle Washington. When I saw the Chess scene and the animated monsters on screen I thought that Ray Harryhausen had done the stop-motion animation. I was a big fan-boy of Harryhausen and had watched and studied his animation since I was 12 years old. I actually studied his animation frame by frame from films I ordered by mail. On the back cover of Famous Monsters Magazine, the selected clips of Ray Harryhausen movies were available on 12 minute reels of Super 8 film. I had the cyclops and dragon animation from the 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Also in my collection of Super 8’s were the films, “20 Million Miles to Earth, Jason and the Argonauts, Earth vs the Flying Saucers, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. All of these films were scrutinized frame by frame on my little Super 8 film editor. I would reel them back and forth to watch the animation one frame at a time. When I did occasionally project these movies on the wall they were unwatchable for the amount of scratches that the Super 8 editor had made. The editor wasn’t the most gentle piece of equipment and as time went by, there was no image left on the film.

Anyway, on my second viewing of Star Wars I realized that the stop motion animation was done by Jon Berg and Phil Tippett. They became my newest heroes in the world of film animation.

I never thought I would ever do Stop Motion Animation for a Star Wars film. By the time I got to work for Lucasfilm at Industrial Light and Magic the studio was turning all digital and the remaining model shop was on it’s last legs. Stop Motion Animation was not the preferred effect any longer. Then in 2015 I was in the right place at the right time and Phil Tippett asked me to work on the new chess sequence for, “Star Wars The Force Awakens”. It took 38 years but I finally got to do some Stop Motion Animation for a Star Wars film. The luck continued when I was again asked to have another go on the chess table for Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker. I was very lucky to be able to be a part of these films and I have Phil Tippett to thank for it all.

Here are the Super 8 movies that became my personal film school when I was a teenager. Watching the animation frame by frame from these movies then trying to duplicate those actions with my own puppets.