AFTER years of idolising works by the likes of legendary animator Ray Harryhausen, Phil Tippett got his break on one of the biggest films ever - Star Wars.

While directors such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have a huge fan base, animators like Tippett have their own worldwide cult following.

It was the 50-year-old American's appreciation of early screen magic which led to him winning two Oscars for his work on Return of the Jedi and Jurassic Park.

"Seeing King Kong on television when I was just five years old, I was mesmerised by these prehistoric animals on the screen," he said.

Tippett would go on to fall under the spell of classic mid-1960s Harryhausen films such as Jason and the Argonauts, and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.

It was such films which convinced him to pursue a career in animation.

He was soon to meet Dennis Muren, a supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, the company which would create the special effects for the Star Wars films.

After a handful of low-budget horror films, Tippett got his chance when he was brought in to work on the first film of the original space fantasy trilogy, released in 1977.

Tippett, after making masks and acting, was eventually allowed to demonstrate his craft on a scene in which "good guy" monster Chewbacca plays chess with talkative droid R2-D2 on a board using holographic creatures.

He was brought back by Lucas for the other two films in the first series - The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

"We were working on sets primarily made out of baking soda, with painted backdrops," said Tippett.

His lifelong interest in prehistoric creatures, and the friendships he forged with palaeontologists, helped to create more realistic creatures.

Tippett has now set up his own company, Tippett Studios.