Sci-Fi Shows for a VFX Buff…

If you know anything about me, I love me some sweet looking visual effects, and because of that, I end up watching a lot of sci-fi shows on television. Now, you may know about some of these shows already and watch them religiously, but some are relatively new and may spark an interest in you. Anywho, read on to see my list of some of my favorites (and not-so-favorites) that are worth giving a go if you are bored on a Saturday night.

Obviously Heroes has to make this list. Now, I know a lot of you may have lost hope in this series after Season 2, because, well it sucked. But since, they have actually done pretty well with the series, creating some stunning effects, and introducing more and more powers… and oh yeah… the story isn’t too bad either. To tell you the truth, I watch this for the powers and and that kind of stuff. I used to get all giddy and call my friends and be all “Holy **** did you SEE that?”, but now I just enjoy it by myself and a nice tasty beverage and brainstorm as to how it was made. This show is the source of a lot of experimentation in After Effects and 3D, and rightly so, because the studio that heads it, Stargate Studios, is damn good at what they do.

Just like a lot of the stuff on SyFy, it is blatantly obvious that they half-assed the visual effects in some of the shots on this show, and although it makes it look cheesy in parts of the show, I enjoy it thoroughly. As an aspiring visual effects professional, I enjoy noticing that the environments weren’t lit correctly in 3d or that the light wrap on an actor is the wrong shade. These things really help me to know what NOT to do in a production environment, and therefore make me more aware of my work. Now, as for the show… it is very entertaining, in an off-the-wall XFiles sort of way, with a ton of CG. SPOILER ALERT! It’s just too bad they killed off the hot blond in the second season.

So by now, you are probably thinking… “Wow, Topher really has horrible taste”, but no sir, you are wrong. I enjoy magic, and sci-fi and those mystical creatures in a non-Napoleon Dynamite type of way… so sue me. I think it’s fun, and I can admit when a show’s VFX suck. This one’s first season REALLY SUCKED. Second season, eh… not so bad. It’s another show like Sanctuary that you can have fun watching and picking it apart, especially on the CG end. There are a lot of visual flaws in lighting, interaction with real life and things like that, but use a show like this to your advantage. The second season was a lot more advanced than the first, so we can only hope the third will stay on course and start to exceed some expectations.

The Stargate franchise has been around since 1996 starting with their first movie, and snowballing into sequels and episodic series over time. They have been able to catch the attention of the sci-fi community with the crazy space exploration and warfare genre, and with that has to come some radical effects. Personally I don’t watch the show, but when I have, I have seen that it is flawlessly made, they have the big, big budget look, with a relatively mediocre sized budget in reality. If you like Star Wars or Star Trek, this is a cool series to check out.

LOST isn’t really CGI-VFX heavy, but they do green screen a lot of their shots, lots of matte painting… and of course they create that Smoke Monster, but I had to include this because it is one of my favorite shows on television, and with it coming back in January, I couldn’t be more excited. The latest season has had more VFX than all the others, largely in part to the Smoke Monster sequences and plane crashes, but I am sure with this sixth and final season, we can expect them to go all out.

I actually just got done watching the Caprica Season opener, and damn… this is pretty awesome. Another show that isn’t too VFX-heavy yet, but it has been only one episode in. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a prequel to the Battlestar Galactica universe (58 years to be exact), and its seems like there is a threat to the human race on the planet Caprica, filled with terrorist organizations and other races from other planets. The pilot is really well made, and I look forward to checking out the rest of the series.

Well there we are! some of the best (and not so great… hahaha) VFX intensive shows on television, and some that you can look forward to after the beginning of the year. If there are any that I have missed, please let me know in the comments and let us know why YOU enjoy it!