Thunderbirds Are Go is a new animated episodic reboot of the 1960's cult hit Thunderbirds series. With a number of vendors serving up content, continuity was important.
To that end, ITV Studios brought Milk VFX onto the project to serve as the visual effects production hub, compositing and finishing all the elements coming through the various vendors working on the show, including New Zealand's Pukeko Pictures and Weta Workshop, which produced the live-action miniatures. Milk VFX was tasked with creating and applying the signature finished 3D look using 2D effects, as well as ensuring the series' iconic look and maintaining that look consistently across 26 episodes.
The Milk team was led by VFX Supervisor Sara Bennett and 2D Supervisors Ellie Sutton and Matt McDougal, working closely with Director David Scott to bring a filmic feel with heavy grain and shallow depth of field, giving the illusion that the CG is indistinguishable from the live action. Milk developed and created key environments integral to the story, including underwater and storm sequences, communication holograms, set enhancements , and skies.
Managing Thunderbirds Are Go VFX
In order to manage so many moving parts - over 1,000 shots per each three-episode block - Milk VFX needed a tool that would allow them to easily plan and track the requirements for each shot, and turned to software from Shotgun. Building out the show in Shotgun from the earliest planning stages allowed Milk to quickly track and generate status reports throughout the project on everything from artist allocations to task and feedback status, approvals, and delivery. In editorial, Shotgun allowed both production and artists to easily track their progress when processing scans to place online and to create directory structures on their main SAN.
Milk VFX head of pipeline, Benoit Leveau, built a scan processing system that works with Shotgun by analyzing shot names, versions, and frame ranges, and automatically transferring them to the correct directory structures once folders are created. Shotgun is then auto-updated with all of the vital information (path to files, file names, version, frame range, user, time , and date) that artists need to work. The process made it much easier for production to filter prepared shots and assign them to artists. With this process in place, any margin for error due to miscommunication is dramatically reduced across all departments working on the show.
Keeping Communication Open
In production, more often than not a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing across departments can lead to lost time and resources. In the case of Thunderbirds, Milk VFX avoided this by having both production and editorial tap Shotgun to see up-to-date details of all shots published between each department.
Once an artist published his or her shots to Shotgun, production created a playlist within Shotgun. This was then passed on to editorial to use as a check list to ingest shots into Digital Vision's Nucoda for dailies review, prior to delivering shots to the client.
The playlist also enables editorial to submit approved shots to the QuickTime renderfarm via a Nuke script that generates the file in the codec required by the client. All these processes are tracked in Shotgun so that versions sent to the client can easily be identified.
Streamlining Review with Playlists
Having a more organized pipeline allows artists to iterate many more versions of each shot, thus yielding better results. For the massive numbers of versions that artists produce each day, Milk VFX uses Shotgun playlists to easily pick up on the latest submissions and assemble lists throughout the day for the compositing supervisor to review. Any approved shots get passed on to the VFX supervisor for feedback, final approval, and , ultimately , into a delivery playlist for the editorial I/O department.
Having this review process in place allows us to track every version of every shot and ensures that artists get feedback in a timely fashion-basically taking what could be a mammoth multi-person daily task into a one-man, straightforward , manageable procedure , ensuring that everything is accounted for-brilliant! said Liam Tully, VFX line producer at Milk VFX.
Custom Tailoring
Milk VFX uses plenty of off-the-shelf tools in its pipeline, including The Foundry's Nuke, Adobe's Photoshop, Autodesk's Maya, and Shotgun, but also develops in-house tools tailored to its working methodology. One customization for Shotgun that was put into place for this project includes a thumbnail extractor that automatically generates a thumbnail from each shot within an .mov file and uploads them to Shotgun, replacing what used to be a time-consuming manual task.
Milk VFX also created tools to customize the way that Nuke and Maya integrate with Shotgun, extending what was already available in Shotgun's Pipeline Toolkit. For instance, once editorial populates the database with resolutions, frame rates, ranges, and more, an artist can select the allocated task to launch in whatever application is being used for the shot, and it will open up into the correct workspace environment.
Finally, the pipeline team has also set up ingest tools to run with Shotgun, enabling artists to easily bring material online from external sources, including QuickTime generation from published playlists, and scan ingest publishing form 3D to 2D. Details are updated in Shotgun, cutting down on the hours required to manually enter all the related workflow data to keep everything on track.
Ultimately Shotgun's robust tracking tools, flexibility, and integration with other workflow tools enabled Milk VFX to manage an incredible number of shots and assets throughout production on Thunderbirds. Milk VFX continues to put pipeline front and c
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Thunderbirds Are Go is a new animated episodic reboot of the 1960's cult hit Thunderbirds series. With a number of vendors serving up content, continuity was important. 
