We see the puppet characters Lady Penelope and Parker driving along the streets of the real world in her Ladyship’s pink, six-wheeled Rolls Royce. Parker sits up front driving.

As they drive along, Lady Penelope gives poor downtrodden Parker a list of things to do.

Parker looks fed up.

He parks the car with Lady Penelope in the back and visits a Halifax branch with a letter.

He’s amazed to discover he has won the top prize of £500,000 in the Halifax Savers Prize Draw.

When asked by a Halifax colleague what he’ll spend the money on, Parker thinks hard.

Next, we see that his boss Lady Penelope is back at the mansion ringing the bell to get Parker’s attention.

But Parker is nowhere to be seen.

That’s because he’s on a beautiful beach, cocktail in hand, waving to a passing water-skier.

The key challenge was to carefully create a fully photo-real CG version of Parker for the branch shots without showing any signs of the difference between the actual puppets shot in-camera and the CG characters.

Extensive research was carried out into the original Thunderbird characters, working with experts to study every detail of their movements, including poses, gestures and the way light reflected off the puppets.

The finer details of the puppets’ hair required a great deal of attention to balance a sense of hyperrealism with the overall synthetic appearance of the puppets.

Unlike in most jobs, where animators strive for photoreal perfection, it was perfecting imperfection in details such as the puppet strings which was integral in determining the authentic recreation.

The cloth simulation also required a great level of care. We worked to rescale the clothing to match the size of the puppets in the modern world and their interaction with real humans.

The animators also worked to subtly enhance the miniature sets in keeping with the archetypal Thunderbirds style.