Phil Tippett Studio details its internally built, closed generative-AI pipeline

At VIEW Conference 2025 in Turin, Tippett Studio's Gary Mundell (CEO), Remko Noteboom (principal software engineer), Mark Dubeau (art director), Tom Gibbons (animation supervisor) and Marc Morissette (VFX supervisor) discussed the studio's generative-AI use, with Phil Tippett joining remotely. The studio trains closed, internal models on photographs of real physical objects rather than adopting third-party AI tools, and scopes their use to specific tasks such as background generation and animation assistance rather than full-shot generation. Noteboom noted the approach still struggles with non-human creatures. Gibbons called the tool "a new kind of hammer" but said AI performances still lack real emotion; Dubeau described the excitement fading once a tool is tested against a real shot's needs. Tippett summarized the relationship as a creative partnership, not a replacement: "the dog trains you just as much as you train it." The durable facts are folded into the new wiki concept Generative AI as an internal pipeline tool at a stop-motion/VFX studio.