An engineer, designer, builder and animator based in the Bay Area, Brett Foxwell makes films, worlds and creatures which display a deep level of design, detail, craft and obsession.
PROJECTS
LEAFPRESSER
Standing under a colorful maple tree in autumn, I realized there was a wonderful replacement animation sequence to be found amongst the leaves. I began to collect, press and photograph over 12,000 of them.
As I widened my leaf explorations I realized that the leaves of every species of plant I could find would fit somewhere within a comprehensive leaf shape sequence. If there was a break in the sequence, it just meant that I had to collect more leaves.
The result is the short film titled ‘LeafPresser’.
Many thanks to Cartoon Brew for the Pick and to Colossal for the Feature!
These are some of the other avenues that the leaves led me down:
WoodSwimmer
A deep dive into the wonderful world of wood
‘Fabricated’ was very much a story told in metal, but for my next film I was thinking about wood.
I became fascinated with the possibilities of a sci-fi world based on the alien forms to be found within this material that grows all around us and that we sometimes take for granted. While brainstorming this world, I came upon the concept of the WoodSwimmer. It was a challenging technique, but once perfected, I was able to shoot short sequences that move the camera through chunks of hardwood, burls and branches. The result is hauntingly beautiful imagery that is both abstract and unquestionably real. In the twisting growth rings and the swirling rays, a new universe is revealed.
As a short film began to build from these sequences, I collaborated with bedtimes, an animator and musician of special talents to compose music and help edit a tight visual and sonic journey through this wondrous and fascinating material. Many thanks to Colossal for the very nice post on the film, and Vimeo for the Staff Pick of the Month!
StarPinE
A new universe is growing…
fabricated
Ten years in the making, a stop-motion-animation science-fiction-adventure.
How I did it:
More About ‘Fabricated’
My explorations of VR/AR, my ruminations on how the brain constucts internal maps of external spaces and the huge pile of wonderful and unorganized pictures I have after every road trip all lead me to the concept of the SiteSeer. This is a speculative photo browser and geographic exploration tool that melds 3D-reconstruction, hyperlapse, time-lapse and 2D photo/video into a navigable virtual world. The result is a short film collaboration with Reuben Wu showing a quick journey through this new realm.
Manifester
A film about a photo
BUILDs
Nov 2023 The new mechano-velociraptor, here having its skin sculpted upon the metal armature, is being cast in silicone with the whole process recorded by a revolutionary new X-Ray Time-Lapse technique that is quite pleasing to the eyes.
Sept 2019 Adam Savage and Tested, in partnership with Oculus, made a VR app for the Oculus Quest headset that visits a series of makers in their studios and captures some of the creative process in full immersive glory. They brought a stereoscopic 180 deg camera to my machine shop and animation studio as I assembled and animated a new armature. I was the first maker to be filmed in the series and it was a fascinating experience to see the rules of a brand new medium being made up and figured out as we went along. Here is the armature getting himself together:
January 2016 I was asked by Phil Tippett to build several armatures for the Dejarik Holochess set to be used in Star Wars Episode 7, The Force Awakens. It was an incredible honor to re-design and build a new version of the first armature that Phil ever made and which was used in Star Wars: A New Hope. Below are several videos showing us building and animating these famous little monsters.
October 2016 After more than ten years of work, Fabricated is complete. It has a World Premiere in New Zealand at the Show Me Shorts Film Festival, which includes a screening at Scott Base in Antarctica. The film then screened at the Warsaw International Film Festival and the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival.
To the special team of collaborators on this film, I thank you all for your artistry, your contributions and your infinite patience as I felt my way through this strange universe.
