Steven's animated films are associative explorations of themes found in history, folklore, and his own unconscious. He treats each film as a poetic essay on a particular subject. His goal is to reveal and make sense of his interconnected thoughts and feelings about his subject through the medium of animation. For Steven, making animation is like making an alchemical mixture, where thought, motion, sound, art, narrative, and abstraction all dwell together. As a visual artist, he believes in the expressive power of materials - that technique and content are inseparable - that ideas only become real when they are tangible. His inspirations come from various sources, including anonymous folk art and song, history, and visual art of various times and places. His method is similar to documentary filmmaking in that he spends a long time intuitively creating images and animated scenes before he imposes a filmic structure. The film's final narrative grows organically out of the accumulated material through the process of editing and sound work.