Deep within the natural lava chambers of Tracy Island lie hidden a network of hangars housing the Thunderbird vehicles.
Thunderbird 1 Hangar
Sofia Bue was a key model maker on all of these interiors due to her excellent model making and paint skills. Her ability to crawl into cramped parts of the sets came in useful too.
The original show is known for having used everyday household objects as detailing in their sets and vehicles. This technique was called scratch building. We made the stylistic choice to do the same with our sets.
In the original you could clearly see a lemon squeezer mounted to the wall just behind TB1
We did the same, but where our set is bigger we actually had to fabricate a larger replica of a squeezer.
Refuel hangar
Thunderbird 2 Hangar and launch pad
David Duke is gluing extra Gack onto a model. We had a huge collection
of random small objects we added as details. Names for these included:
Nurnies, Greeblies, Goeties and Foefenjollies to name just a few.
On one of my visits home to Strand in Cape Town, South Africa, I decided to do a little holiday project with my family. This turned out to be a perfect excuse to have everyone sit down and spend some good old recreational time together.
My daughter Angelina getting started on texturing the stonework in paper clay onto cardboard walls and towers.
We did the roof tiles with little cut out tiles of cardboard
My mother Annalie Fouche delved into stone wall sculpting too!
Since joining Weta in 2010 I was hoping to return to the art of miniature model making for film. Weta Workshop is of course famous for their miniature work on films like the Lord of The Rings trilogy and King Kong(2005) amongst many others.
My opportunity would come in 2013 with the ITV and Pukeko Pictures remake of the 1964 British sci-fi classic TV series Thunderbirds
The new show would feature extensive miniature model environments and practical effects with the characters and Thunderbirds vehicles added in CGI. I was given the role of putting together a team as as lead model maker.
The first glimpse into the world we created appeared in this short introduction video:
Tracy Island 1/100th scale
We started off the show by working on the sets that would reappear on nearly every episode. First up was a re-imagining of Tracy Island the secret headquarters of International Rescue.
Series director David Scott and Production Designer Theo Baynton developed the look of the new island with the Weta Workshop Design team and passed on a detailed 3d model for us to begin construction.
A much loved location from the original show, we tried to be faithful by retaining a slightly retro feel in our new take.
The island build was started by milling out a rough shape in polystyrene from the 3d files.
A steel armature was installed into the foam to assist with moving the model and later for weighting the model down when lowered into the pool.
One of my favorite resources at the workshop is the extensive library of rock texture molds. These silicone molds are taken off real rocks from the beachfront all around Wellington,NZ. Urethane foam is cast into the molds to create perfect, easily carved reproductions of rock texture in sheets. These sheets are snapped or cut into sections laid onto the polystyrene shape and glued in with expanding foam. After paint and installation of the handmade buildings we covered the island in jungle. We made and installed over 3000 palm trees made by attaching laser cut leaves to 25mm timber screws.
To set the scene around the island, we build a 30cm deep tank filled with food color tinted water. We had the pool constantly overflowing into a catchment and pumping water back in to achieve a perfect horizon line.
For scenes where we see the Tracy home and its's interiors, we constructed the Tracy Island house with interiors at 1/12th scale for close ups.
Rob Skene here working on lounge furniture. This was one of his first projects at Weta.
Long time collaborator Joaquin Loyzaga adding final touches just before filming.
Mona Peters and Sofia Bue Pedersen did indeed do that for a day. Practical effects on this show turned out to often be a very simple old school solution
One of those rare times when a project is proposed that initially just sounds too ambitious to really happen.
Well I learned not to underestimate this team.
My second attempt at a 1/6th scale figure for Weta.
Radagast as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy in the Hobbit films. This figure was very tricky to portray with his complex and lopsided costume. I recall showing this to Mr McCoy. He was fairly complimentary in his own quirky way.
Conceived by Art Director Daniel Falconer as a matching set. These small figures were very enjoyable to research. Each was portrayed from a specific scene in the films. Aragon where we first see him at The Prancing Pony and Arwen from a scene in Return Of The King. To keep production costs low these were intentionally sculpted with minimal parts and undercuts to simplify the molding and casting process.
Straight after finishing the 1:6 collectable sculpture of Gandalf, Weta asked me to make a full sized figure of the same design.
We started off by scanning the collectable figure and converting it into a digital asset. The scaled up version was then milled out in polystyrene. I make this process sound simple only because I was hardly involved.
Once milled out I replaced The staff and sword hilt with casts taken from the film props. I also used a life cast of Sir Ian McKellen's face instead of the scan of my little sculpt.
All the polystyrene was then covered in a wax based clay to be sculpted textured and detailed.
A bronze version was later installed outside the Roxy Cinema in Miramar Wellington.
