Supermarionation (a portmanteau of "super", "marionette" and "animation") is a puppetry technique devised in the 1960s by British production company AP Films. It was used extensively in the company's numerous Gerry and Sylvia Anderson-produced action-adventure series, the most famous of which was Thunderbirds. The term was coined by Gerry Anderson, possibly in imitation of "Dynamation", Ray Harryhausen's stop motion technique.

The system used marionettes suspended and controlled by thin wires. The fine metal filaments doubled as both suspension-control wires for puppet movement, and as electrical cables that took the control signals to the electronic components concealed in the marionettes' heads.

The heads contained solenoid motors that created the synchronised mouth movements for dialogue and other functions. The voice synchronisation was achieved by using a specially designed audio filter which was actuated by the signal from the pre-recorded tapes of the voice actors; this filter would convert the signal into a series of pulses which then travelled down the wire to the solenoids controlling the puppet's lips, creating lip movements that were precisely synchronised with the dialogue.

Sylvia Anderson (née Thamm), born 25 March 1927, is a British voice artist and film producer, most notable for collaborations with Gerry Anderson, to whom she was married from 1962 to 1975.

Though co-creator and co-writer of some of their productions through the 1960s, Sylvia's main contribution was the development of realistic characters that viewers could identify with and become involved with. She usually directed the bi-weekly voice recording sessions, and provided the voices of many female characters, most memorably Lady Penelope in the Thunderbirds television series and subsequent films. She and Gerry Anderson married in 1960 and were divorced in 1980 following a five year separation.

Following graduation from the London School of Economics, Sylvia Thamm joined Polytechnic Films as a secretary, where she met editor/director Gerry Anderson. When Anderson and his colleague Arthur Provis created AP Films following the collapse of Polytechnic in 1957, Sylvia joined them along with colleagues John Read and Reginald E. "Reg" Hill. She became Anderson's second wife shortly after, in 1960, and became more involved in production duties.

Gerry Anderson MBE (born 14 April 1929) is a British publisher, producer, director and writer, famous for his futuristic television programmes, particularly those involving specially modified marionettes, a process called "Supermarionation".

His first television production was the 1957 Roberta Leigh children's series The Adventures of Twizzle and it would be almost a decade before his most famous and successful production, Thunderbirds, would be produced. His production company, originally known as AP Films and later renamed Century 21 Productions, was originally formed with partners Arthur Provis (hence AP Films – Anderson Provis Films), Reg Hill, John Read.

He has also written and produced several feature films, although these did not perform as well as expected at the box office. Following a successful move towards live action productions in the 1970s, his long and highly successful association with Lew Grade's ITC (Incorporated Television Company) ended with the second series of Space: 1999. After a career lull when a number of new series concepts failed to get off the ground, his career began a new phase in the early 1980s when audience nostalgia for his earlier Supermarionation series (prompted by Saturday morning re-runs in the UK) led to new Anderson productions being commissioned. A number of new projects have resulted including a recent CGI remake of Captain Scarlet entitled Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet.

Barry Gray (18 July 1908 in Lancashire, England - 26 April 1984 in Guernsey, Channel Islands) was a British musician and composer who is best known for his work for Gerry Anderson.

He was born into a musical family and was greatly encouraged to pursue a musical career from a very early age. Starting at the age of five - with piano lessons - he studied diligently and became a student at the Manchester Royal College of Music and at Blackburn Cathedral. He studied composition under the Hungarian teacher, Matyas Seiber.

Gray's first professional job was in London for B.Feldman & Co., where he gained valuable experience in scoring for theatre and variety orchestras. From there, he joined Radio Normandy as a composer-arranger. After serving six years with the RAF during World War II he returned to the music industry to work with such worthies as Vera Lynn and Hoagy Carmichael.

In 1956 he joined Gerry Anderson's AP Films, where he first scored the puppet show, The Adventures of Twizzle. This was followed by Torchy The Battery Boy and then the famed Four Feather Falls, a puppet Western based on a concept suggested by Gray.

Ronald Sydney Embleton (6 October 1930 – 13 February 1988) was a British comics artist and illustrator whose work was much admired by fans and editors alike. David Ashford and Norman Wright, writing in Book and Magazine Collector (March 2002) note that "his work for such diverse periodicals as Express Weekly, TV Century 21, Princess, Boy's World and Look and Learn have earned him the respect of every practitioner in the field and the gratitude of all of us who admire the art of the comic strip."

Embleton—who, in his early career, signed his work 'Ron' -- was born in London and submitted his first cartoon at the age of nine and, aged 12, won a national poster competition. After training at the South East Essex Technical College and School of Art he worked in a commercial studio for six months during which time he began freelancing comic strips to independent publishers. 'Ron' was beginning to establish himself when Embleton turned 18 and was called up for his National Service.

In 1950, Embleton returned to freelancing, setting up a studio with a schoolfriend, Terry Patrick, and James Bleach, whom Patrick knew from life-drawing classes. The three quickly established themselves with various independent publishers -- Scion, TV Boardman, Norman Light, DCMT and others—and Embleton also began contributing to Amalgamated Press's Comet, Comic Cuts, Cowboy Comics and Super Detective Library.