The Thunderbird 2 launch had to be painstakingly created to match TV viewers’ expectations. The movement of the cliff wall and palm trees were memorable images for fans.

From Miniatures to Computers
Framestore CFC elected to create the vehicles entirely with CGI. Nelmes and McGee believed that using miniatures would result in a movie that would look just like the series. CG modelers were faced with the uneasy task of replicating the original ships without any genuine reference. It turned out that all the miniatures had been thrown away, destroyed or simply taken home by effects team members as toys for their children when the show was cancelled. One can wonder about the price that these landmark "toys" would fetch today! The production designer, John Beard, dusted down and updated the original ship designs to create a look which was refered to as “retro-modernism”. Working closely with the concept artists and their drawings, Framestore-CFC's modellers produced a virtual turntable. This allowed collaborative design decisions to be made at a 3D workstation located alongside the art department.

The Tracy family actually uses five different types of vehicles. Thunderbird 1 is an 85-footlong super fastjet. Always first on a disaster scene, it allows the pilot to evaluate the needs in terms of equipment. Adapted machines are then loaded on to Thunderbird 2, a 150-foot long heavy-duty ship, and transported to the disaster scene for immediate action. The sleek Thunderbird 3 is a 175-foot tall space rocket that allows the Tracy family to reach Thunderbird 5, their very own space station orbiting Earth. Finally, Thunderbird 4 is a submarine dedicated to water operations. This fleet of vehicles is supplemented by a series of extraordinary machines that International Rescue uses for saving the day on any kind of disaster.

Frakes requested a certain degree of artistic licence in the texturing of the ships. "Although the action is grounded in reality in the movie, this is a Thunderbirds world, not our every day world," says Nelmes. "After all, even London is sunny in the movie! Jonathan wanted this world to be bright, shiny, and colorful. It led us to tone down the aging textures on the CG models. We could have added a lot more damage to the surfaces: after all, the Thunderbirds operate at disaster scenes. They must get a lot of abuse. The same is true for Thunderbird 3:we could have included more burns in the paint job to illustrate the many re-entries of the vehicle in the atmosphere. But Jonathan wanted this sleek, pristine look."

In the silo, The Tracys load special equipment onto Thunderbird 2 for transport to a disaster scene.

The Car That Could Fly
An equal amount of work was invested into Lady Penelope's car, dubbed FAB1, a vehicle that was computer-generated in many shots. Interestingly enough, the Rolls-Royce company declined to have the new car presented as one of their products, although the original series had provided them with a lot of free advertising. The Ford Co. very happily took over and helped design a supercharged 23-foot-long six-wheeled version of their new Thunderbird model, a car that transforms into an aircraft and a speedboat for key sequences in the film.

"The design of FAB1 was jointly developed by the art department, the Ford Co. and Framestore CFC," notes Nelmes. "The production built a practical car for the driving scenes, but it didn't have any gadgets. When FAB1 needed to grow wings or a new piece of equipment, we switched to CGI. Our main concern in building the model was to make sure that there was enough room in the body to fit wings, engines, and all the machinery required to make if fly or float. The hydrofoil and flying scenes were done with the CG car in which we had inserted digital doubles of the actors. For shots of FAB1 on water, we used elements of a jet ski for some of the wake. Smoke, dust heat haze and con-trails were created in CG and added in. FAB1 and the Thunderbirds were all built and animated in Maya, and rendered in RenderMan.