When one cares to think about it, the logic of this is quite unescapable: the studio should have had as many voice artists as there were puppets [talking 'extras' included!], which it clearly didn't. Rather the contrary: a single voice artist would sometimes 'speak for' more than one puppet. If puppets had been based on the artists' faces, these should have looked alike as well. Parker, Brains and John Tracy are a case in point here: they were all voiced by David Graham and Parker's looks are quite unlike those of Brains or John. At the same time, Mr. Graham looks like neither of them so there goes your argument.
Nevertheless, there is no denying that Stingray's Atlanta Shore bears a more than passing resemblance to her voice artist Lois Maxwell, and Fireball XL5's Venus is more obviously based on Sylvia's features than Lady Penelope, while Captain Scarlet bears a close resemblence to his voice artist, as do both Captain Blue and Colonel White. Probably the most obvious similarity [in name as well!] of all is that between The Secret Service's Father Unwin and comedian Stanley Unwin.
On the other hand, Troy Tempest does indeed remind one of James Garner while both the Glengarry Castle caretaker Mr. Morton in the Captain Scarlet episode The Trap and Dr. Giordello in the Spectrum Strikes Back episode are both clearly dead puppet ringers for Robert Mitchum. This is supported by Sylvia's claims that, to guide the sculptors in character visualisation, she often provided them with pictures from current pop- or filmstars on which to base the puppet face. Captain Scarlet's Destiny Angel, for example, is said to be sculpted to look like Ursula Andress.
Having said all that, here is the [almost] complete gallery of voice artists and the main characters from each series they gave a voice so you can judge for yourself if the rumours are true. Some images are not up to snuff [and some could not even be located] — I'll rectify that in the future.
And now that we're on the subject, John Blundall – member of the original sculptor team and longtime Anderson associate – expressed himself on many puppeteering subjects in an interview published in the Supermarionation is Go! magazine. Here is a quote on designing Parker's and other faces. And here is an even more telling quote from the same interview, highlighting Mr. Blundall's opinion on the socalled 'perfectly proportioned' puppets.
