New Grimm & Sanctuary tonight, interviews with Sasha Roiz and Bear McCreary, VFX Minds panel & general updates

Let's start with Friday night TV.

Grimm 1x04, "Lonelyhearts," airs at 9 pm on NBC. Synopsis:

After investigating a strange cluster of female deaths and disappearances, Nick (David Giuntoli) sends Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) undercover to get a whiff of a hypnotic suspect.

In the meantime, a stranger shows up looking to avenge the death of his friend at the hands of a Grimm, but he’ll have to get past Captain Renard (Sasha Roiz). Russell Hornsby, Bitsie Tulloch and Reggie Lee also star.

Patrick Fischler (Mad Men, Southland, Lost) guest stars. Blastr has a first look at the creatures from tonight's episode, and you can see a few sneak peeks on NBC.com.

Sasha Roiz did a round of radio interviews this morning. You can listen to them on Blog Talk Radio, MrMedia.com and KeyW.com.

Sanctuary 3x07, "Icebreaker," airs at 10 pm on Syfy. Synopsis:

Henry, Declan and a team from the UK Sanctuary go to the Bering Sea to investigate a mystery on a shipwrecked icebreaker, where the crew has killed the Abnormals on board and each other.

Caprica wins VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series

The Visual Effects Society announced the winners of the VES Awards in Beverly Hills yesterday. Inception nabbed the top awards in the feature categories, and Caprica, Boardwalk Empire and The Pacific won in the main television categories. You can find the complete list of winners is on THR. The other VES Award nominees in the Broadcast Series category were Stargate Universe, V, No Ordinary Family, and The Event.

Big congratulations to the VFX team!

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series
Caprica
Michael Gibson, Gary Hutzel, Davey Morton, Jesse Mesa Toves

Patton Oswalt of all people hosted the event. There are some pictures at Getty Images.

More updates coming later today, but for now: a new Caprica story, "Vengeance Is Mine, Part 2," has been posted at Beginning of Line. Check it out!

Caprica nominated for a VES Award, Beginning of Line launches tomorrow with Caprica: Season 2

The Visual Effects Society has released the list of the nominees for the VES Awards today and Caprica's VFX team has been nominated for an award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series, along with teams working on No Ordinary Family, V, The Event, and Stargate Universe. 

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Series
Caprica
Michael Gibson VFX Producer
Gary Hutzel VFX Supervisor
Davey Morton VFX Artist
Jesse Toves CGI Artist

Congratulations to all and thanks for the frakking amazing work you've done on the show!

The awards ceremony takes place on February 1 and will air on Reelzchannel on February 19.

In other good news, if you have no interest whatsoever in saying goodbye to the show, cancelled or not, this may just be what the doctor ordered. Teresa Jusino's Beginning of Line project, which launches tomorrow (Tuesday, January 11) at beginningofline.weebly.com, will continue to explore the universe and characters of the show in stories written by fans that will be posted every Tuesday. Here is a snippet from the announcement:

Beginning of Line will launch Tuesday, January 11th, and will begin with “Caprica: Season 2.” Season Two will include 18 brand new stories for you to enjoy, written by Caprica fans from all over the world! Each story will be accompanied by a piece of Caprica-inspired artwork also created by a fan, and will be posted weekly the way episodes would have aired had the show been allowed to continue. There will be as many iterations of the Caprica universe as there are contributors, and you will be free to discuss the merits and drawbacks of each in our forums. You’re also invited to submit Caprica-inspired fiction and artwork yourself!

In addition to being a fun and worthwhile pursuit in its own right, fan fiction has proven to be the lifeline through which its source material can continue to exist. Before Doctor Who returned to television in 2005, it existed solely as fan fiction for a good sixteen years, and many of the writers of the 2005 Who were products of fandom. People like Steven Moffat and Paul Cornell were writing fan fiction, keeping their beloved property alive any way they could! And now, Doctor Who is the most popular show on the BBC all these years later. All because young fans grew up and just wouldn’t leave it alone.

For the full announcement and to see how you can contribute, visit Teresa Jusino's blog.

Final reminders: Paula Malcomson guest stars on Lie to Me tonight (Fox, 8-10 pm) and Kendall Cross is on Human Target on Wednesday (Fox, 8-10 pm).

Jane Espenson's new projects, Game of Thrones and Torchwood: Miracle Day (fka Torchwood: The New World), have definite premiere dates. Game of Thrones starts airing on Sunday, April 17, on HBO, and the new season of Torchwood premieres on July 1 on BBC One in the UK and Starz in the U.S. 

Another show that got a premiere date this week is The Killing, with Michelle Forbes, Richard Harmon and Kacey Rohl. It kicks off on Sunday, April 3, at 10 pm on AMC.

Visual effects on Caprica: Interview with Gary Hutzel

SCI FI Wire has a new interview with Caprica's VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel. The article is here. It contains some vague spoilers.

Hutzel previewed the upcoming episodes in the press room at the Visual Effects Society Awards, where he won for the model work on Battlestar Galactica.

"When we first see Gemenon and we're within a cathedral, we want that to feel very natural to the audience," Hutzel said in an exclusive interview last weekend in Century City, Calif. "That cathedral will probably draw very little attention aside from the fact that it'll look like a terrific location. Other than that, I don't think people will say, 'I've been transported away out of the show.' I think instead they'll say, 'This is a dark place,' which is correct for the tone of the scene. This is a dark place where bad things could happen."

The point is to make the audience believe that this is the real world we arrive at just before our demise and not some robot fantasy. "My goal always is to make my storytelling, the visual-effects storytelling, a part of the natural flow of the story," Hutzel said. "I never want to do anything that is jarring or will take the audience out of the show. I never want the audience to stop and say, 'We've gone to a fantasy world.' Caprica, like Battlestar, is not a fantasy world. It's a real place. What I need to do is always maintain that framework so we never break that window for the audience. They never feel like they're in a fantasy show."