Brett Foxwell

United States of America

Brett Foxwell is a Bay Area–based artist specializing in stop-motion animation and world-building. An engineer, designer, builder, and animator, he creates films, creatures, and environments that reveal a deep attention to material, structure, and craft. His practice spans both narrative and experimental short films, often constructed from physical materials such as metal, wood, and organic matter. In works such as Fabricated and WoodSwimmer, he transforms raw materials into immersive visual systems, using camera movement and animation to reveal hidden landscapes within steel, glass, or hardwood.

At the core of his practice is a fascination with the latent structures of the physical world. Through meticulous and often labor-intensive processes, he uncovers unexpected universes within familiar materials, from the diversity of leaf forms in LeafPresser—for which he collected and photographed thousands of leaves—to the internal geometries of natural and fabricated matter. Alongside his independent work, he has contributed to large-scale productions and collaborations, including the construction of stop-motion armatures for projects such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Book of Boba Fett, extending his material-driven approach into cinematic and commercial contexts.


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Leaf Presser - Horizontal

Leaf_Presser_-_Horizontal_Brett_Foxwell_Photography.mp4

A catalog of the many shapes, colors and textures available in the world of leaves

“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’.”

technique

photography

format

landscape

duration

01:44

year

n/a

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