A VFX Legend From 'Empire Strikes Back' And 'RoboCop' Spent 30 Years Making An Insane Animated Movie

If you’ve ever watched a DVD special feature in your life, there’s a good chance you’ve seen hirsute stop-motion animator Phil Tippett. He’s the movie legend who made the AT-ATs walk in The Empire Strikes Back, brought the ED-209 to life in RoboCop, and built the grotesque monster who almost devoured a diaper-clad Dan Aykroyd in Coneheads.

Between gigs working on some of the greatest movies of all time, Tippett has been quietly crafting his own stop-motion movie called Mad God. This thing has been in the works for so long, he literally started it due to a professional “lull” following RoboCop 2. After pausing production to work on Jurassic Park, Tippett put the project aside until a Kickstarter campaign raised the funds necessary to finish the film in the last decade. Now a trailer for the completed Mad God has been released online, and it looks … completely insane? And also incredible

According to Tippett, the movie is more like a “collage” than a straightforward narrative and was driven by his “unconscious.” The basic plot involves someone called “The Assassin,” who travels through “a forbidding world of tortured souls, decrepit bunkers, and wretched monstrosities forged from the most primordial horrors of the subconscious mind.” You know, one of those. The final cut of the movie will have its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, where Tippett is also receiving a lifetime achievement award at a ceremony that, you have to imagine, won’t use that clip from Coneheads.

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Top Image: madgodmovie.com