Ian Scoones(1940-2010)
- Visual Effects
- Special Effects
Ian Scoones graduated from the Medway College of Art in 1960. He was
soon after engaged as assistant to special effects wizard
Les Bowie at Hammer's Bray Studio. In addition
to creating occasional special effects for big screen horror films
(often uncredited), he also constructed some of the miniature models
and landscapes used in
Gerry Anderson's
Thunderbirds (1965). In 1970,
Scoones joined the BBC Visual Effects Department, where he established
his reputation with prodigious work on the cult series
Doctor Who (1963). He built almost
all of the spacecraft models used in the show during the
Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker
era, including the excellent Jaggaroth ship from "City of Death"
(designed on a model stage built at BBC's Ealing facility) and the
Ogron vessel from "Frontier in Space". His numerous other contributions
included planetary landscapes, the TARDIS spinning through a temporal
vortex in "Pyramids of Mars" and the preliminary designs for K-9.
After "Doctor Who", Scoones went on to work on Blake's 7 (1978), where the budgetary constraints were even tighter (£50 per episode). In 1980, he became special effects supervisor for Hammer House of Horror (1980). From 1994, he lived in retirement, first in Spain, then in Bulgaria, where he died in January 2010 at the age of 69.
After "Doctor Who", Scoones went on to work on Blake's 7 (1978), where the budgetary constraints were even tighter (£50 per episode). In 1980, he became special effects supervisor for Hammer House of Horror (1980). From 1994, he lived in retirement, first in Spain, then in Bulgaria, where he died in January 2010 at the age of 69.
