Visual effects master Phil Tippett was only 33 when he left ILM to set up a studio in his garage to create an experimental short called Prehistoric Beast. Next came the Emmy-winning visual effects he created for the CBS animated documentary Dinosaur!, followed by the jaw-droppingly cool visuals he came up for the 1986 movie Robocop. Always willing to embrace new forms, Tippett made a smooth transition to digital effects, and the work he and Craig Hayes did on Jurassic Park led to the development of the Digital Input Device.

You can never think of Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 sci-fi epic Starship Troopers without immediately recalling Tippett Studio’s beautifully visualized giant arachnid battle sequences. In the years that followed, moviegoers were treated to more masterful vfx work in a wide variety of pics, including Hollow Man, Cats & Dogs, The Haunting, The Matrix Revloutions, Hellboy and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D.

The Berkeley based studio hasn’t been showing any signs of creative fatigue in recent years. After delivering a mighty fine Templeton in Charlotte’s Web, the Tippett boffins created the digital rats in Enchanted, and perfected the art of digital wolves for The Golden Compass and Twilight: New Moon. Not surprisingly, they tell us their in-house slogan is “Creativity or death!” and the reason they stay in business is their “Love of pain, love of film, love of crew.” Now these are words we can keep close to our hearts for another 25 years of hairy monsters and super creeps.