10 Terrible CGI Moments In Big Budget TV Shows
Even though the screen is smaller, there's no excuse for CGI to look THIS bad.
Visual effects have been around since long before the television was in its earliest stages, and the idea of using special effects to produce realistic imagery has led to a world in which we rarely see an image that isn't doctored in some form or another. Sorry to break it to you.
As technology has improved, so has our capacity to create images using it, and it turns out that the entertainment industry has since come to rely pretty heavily on the use of computer generated imagery. Who knew, right?
Given that TV is one of the most popular entertainment industries in the world, it would follow that some of the biggest and most expensive shows would make use of the latest and most realistic CGI possible.
Unfortunately, that isn't always true.
The use of CGI is essential in genres such as sci-fi, fantasy and horror, where making the outlandish as realistic as possible is the name of the game, yet even the biggest shows often make major blunders where visual effects are concerned.
Whether through poor design or poor execution, let's take a look at 10 of the worst CGI moments in big budget shows.
10. Teen Wolf - Transformations
Teen Wolf premiered in 2011 on MTV, and is loosely based on the 1985 Michael J. Fox classic of the same name.
Teen Wolf reviewed pretty well with critics, for the most part at least. While it wasn't without its controversies, it was generally respected and ran for six seasons and 100 episodes, coming to an end in 2017.
The effects of the original movie, while looking a little dated today, remain impressive, and so the TV reboot of sorts had a certain reputation to live up to. Should be easy, surely, given the technological advancements in CGI since the mid-'80s.
Somehow, Teen Wolf's transformation scenes are laughable. Even with the backing of a big player like MTV, it looks less like a human becoming a werewolf and more like a child's drawing coming to life every time a character transforms into their bestial alter-ego.
It did nothing to help the dark, dramatic tone of the show, and instead came off as jarring, cheap and really, really, bad.