Heroes returns with a new direction and a new vfx supervisor at Stargate Digital. The effects are more complex now, including Wes' flying sequence. All Heroes images credited to NBC Universal/Stargate Digital.

One of the benefits of VFX for TV is the opportunity to evolve the work from season to season. For the vfx crews and supervisors on those series, a show's hiatus offers a unique chance to upgrade, refine and tweak their approaches, techniques and technology.

For example, after making a big splash in its freshman season, Heroes is back with a new direction and a new vfx supervisor. Replacing first-season Supervisor Mark Kolpack is his Stargate Digital colleague Eric Grenaudier, who is no stranger to the show having worked as a compositor on its first season. "Obviously having already spent a year with Heroes, you learn some subtle things like the styles the producers are looking for and the type of effects that seem to be working well for them and for the audience, so you build on this," he says.

Grenaudier adds that Stargate has worked on upgrading the show's obvious effects as well as its more subtle ones. "We've improved simple things like how to light a really big greenscreen, what tweaks we could do to the matte painting later," he explains.

The scene with Japanese warriors racing down a hillside is another example of the more complex shots from Stargate Digital on Heroes this season.

The show on average requires more shots in terms of quantity and complexity this year. Grenaudier cites as an example a scene in an early episode in which a crowd of Japanese warriors races down a hillside, as well as a flying scene involving a new character Wes.

Getting a jump on the more complex shots is essential, Grenaudier emphsizes. "That is something I'm trying to do as much as possible, which is when a sequence is heavily complex, trying to do animatics, working with the storyboard artists and doing simple 3D animation and really blocking camera moves, camera angles, lighting as early in the process as possible."

On Wes' flying sequence, Grenaudier says Stargate created an early animatic shot of the helicopter plates in-house. "That was tricky. That was a combination of greenscreen wirework and avatars with, hopefully, a successful trans between the various pieces," he says of the final shot.

Another Heroes challenge for Stargate came from a sequence in which Claire cuts off her small toe with a pair of scissors, only to watch it grow back before her eyes.

Another challenge came from a sequence in which Claire cuts off her small toe with a pair of scissors, only to watch it grow back before her eyes. Grenaudier says the vfx crew collaborated with the prosthetics department that created a foot to be used on set. Getting the toe to grow back convincingly was difficult because, Grenaudier says, "there was not model for how it grows back." Stargate did a number of passes before getting it to look realistic without being too gross.

Entering its seventh season, meanwhile, the biggest change in the visual effects on The CW's Smallville occurred behind-the-scenes, as Entity FX opened a Vancouver branch called Entity FX North.

The Canada branch thus allows Entity to split the effects work on the show between Vancouver, where the show is shot, and Los Angeles. For the idea to work, the company had to set up a system that uses high-speed Internet connections and ISP phone service to ensure an instantaneous working relationship between those offices.