Steve Scott’s Career Harmonies
Meet Steve Scott, animation director. 
He’s rep’d by London-based Not To Scale, and his work is simply stunning. Have a ganders at this little Flash-animated gem - it’s the music video for a song called ‘Suburban Harmony’ by Telemetry Orchestra.
Oh, by the way, you just met Steve Scott, musician. That’s right, Mr. Scott is IN Telemetry Orchesra. That’s his band. Reminds me of the talented folks in Lemon Jelly, who also make their own Flash-animated videos.
Steve has also done some work with the design and animation shop Sixty40, who were recently profiled here at CHF, and here you can see his VH1 spot that tries to clear up the mysteries behind some Led Zeppelin lyrics.
I got in touch with Steve, who actually spent a year working at Disney, and he explained his process:
Almost all of my projects were created using Flash, but always as part of a process. I usually use Illustrator for character design, then do animation in Flash and then, at some stage, chuck everything into After Effects for further grading.
Tags: Steve Scott, UK
February 15th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Very nice clip. I’ve enjoyed it a lot, being as I am a fan of Heinz Edelmann’s designs for The Yellow Submarine. Indeed, this animation is more o less an homage to the Submarine (let’s put it this way.)
February 15th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
About the process: there seems to be a kind of holy triad of programs used in most productions: Illustrator + Flash + After Effects.
In my current favourite series, Foster’s Home… this is the way they create the wonderful show. I read in an interview with McCracken that each episode is getting easier to produce, thanks to the huge library of assets they’re building up, episode after episode. Digital assets are infinitely modifiable, recolourable, rescalable, etc. and this means that even devoting the same time to new episodes, they are able to create more and more intrincate animations, situations and effects.
February 16th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I hate this “you tube” format, the cool
part of this website was being able to save a few animations and check them out at your leisure or with a group of fellow workers, now that has ended. having to be constantly online isn’t that great.
February 17th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
My anonymous friend, it is possible to save streaming media to your computer for offline use. I have posted a mini-tutorial if you want to learn how, together with a comment of this fascinating clip by Steve Scott in my blog Acuarela.
February 18th, 2006 at 12:10 am
thank-you, the only problem is that you tube saves the streamed flash video to a proprietory format that can’t be read by the flash player. you can change the extension so the icon changes but thats about it, hence the rating of “I hate”
February 18th, 2006 at 2:48 am
This particular video clip is available in normal SWF format at the Not To Scale website. Instead of the YouTube link, visit that one instead. I saved it in my computer with no problems.