Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75322 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 48 pages

Customer Reviews

A real disapointment
I've been waiting over a year for this product and the only good thing I can say about it is that any material produced on this subject is welcome, plus the book's quite big, colourful and cheap.

What I was expecting from a technical manual was some, er, technical stuff: some vehicle dimensions, some performance figures, some (speculative) cross sections... anything like that. Sadly there's all to little of that sort of material and as for the idea of anything as enlightening as a cross section (like those in the excellent Graham Bleathman books on other Anderson TV series)... well: forget it.

What I got for just under a tenner was lots and lots (and lots and lots!) of CGI renderings of a few vehicles. 'Lots and lots' on the basis of, once you've built a CGI model you can (obviously) rotate it and re-render the model to your heart's content and fill up page after page after page.

The problem is that this is what has been done... and not even done very well. Compared to extant - and easy to obtain photographs - the images aren't even particularly accurate. I could go into a big list of errors for some of the illustrations by my 'anorak warning light' has just lit up so I wont do that. And to cap it all, the renderings aren't even all that pretty: often sharp and angular where the original models were (from photographs) rather less so. Lacking in detail in close up where the rendering process is - after all - just a 2D image stretched over a 3D wire-frame.

Added to that are a few potted examples of when the vehicles appeared - like a stripped down episode guide which were largely a waste of space. These were - presumably - there to add some text to the pages and pages of CGI renderings. What a shame they didn't contain any worthwhile (and not very easily available elsewhere) information.

In conclusion? Buy it if your a fan. In a very worst case scenario it might persuade publishers that theirs a market for similar products and - with luck - the next one off the presses will be better.

Take a close look before you buy
Perhaps my expectations were too high? I was expecting something along the lines of Graham Bleathman's illustrations, whereas this book is quite different. The computer generated models of the various craft are variable in quality and, whilst the detail and rendering of weathered surfaces is good, many of the images suffer from a common, irritating problem in that the graphics software used has difficulty in producing natural looking curved lines. Instead of curved edges the illustrations often break up into an angular, polygonal lines - rather like a join the dots puzzle. This seems to have been addressed to a degree on the outer edges of the illustrations where they have been scribed to lay on a white background, but internal curved lines are typically wonky. The Mobile, Interceptor and Lunar Carrier/Module are the most affected sections. If the images were amateur, fan-produced computer models on the Internet then that would be one thing, but I expect somehting rather more professional in a publication. Once you are aware of the angular snag your eye gets drawn to it all the time - rather like when you first notice motion blur on LCD televisions. A pity, as the text, labelling and frame grabs that accompany the illustrations are fine.

So, as per the title of this review, the thunbnails and other images on web sites like Amazon aren't large enough to reveal the flaws. I recommend that you handle a copy of the book and take a closer look before parting with your money. Frankly, I wish that I hadn't bothered ordering it.

Expected more
As others have said, I was expecting Bleathman-type illustrations. No interiors apart from screenshots from the TV show. The weathering is overdone, especially Sky One. Notable omissions: Moonbase and Straker's/Foster's cars. The redundant episode-recaps have appeared before in the Complete UFO and Complete Gerry Anderson books. On the positive side, the book was cheap.