Superhero tales continue to enjoy a certain cross-platform primacy at the box office, on streaming sites, and on the small screen, thanks to shows like Gotham, Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, and The Flash.

With great visibility comes great recognition for the work of making those superheroes – and supervillains – as visually believable as possible. The CW’s The Flash grabbed its first Emmy nomination for its VFX work this year, specifically for the episode where one of comics’ key simians, Gorilla Grodd, was brought to digital life.

In deciding which episode to submit, VFX supervisor Armen V. Kevorkian told us that the episode featuring Grodd (“Grodd Lives”) was an obvious choice “because it’s an eight-foot CG telepathic gorilla.”

While Grodd has morphed from a Silver Age–era comic-relief type of villain to a more serious – and tragic – “animal/human hybrid” figure (at least mentally), Kevorkian’s team didn’t have the same production resources or timeline that other recent tragic ape figures (see: Andy Serkis as Caesar) have enjoyed.

“The biggest difference between TV and features,” says Kevorkian, whose credits include previous Star Trek iterations like Voyager and Enterprise, “is mainly the time. You’re dealing with multiple episodes in different stages at different times – prepping, and posting. You can have five episodes on your plate at one time. That’s a big difference – with a feature, you’re concentrating on one thing for a year.”

You might also get to play around with mo-capped actors on a feature, but Kevorkian found he had to be his “own private Grodd,” to coin a phrase, with his crew.

Grodd was fully animated by hand. “I was blocking it out roughly – acting it out for the team, showing them ‘this is what I think he should be doing.’” Kevorkian laughs, but adds, “We don’t have the luxury, especially because of time, to use all of that technology,” like the aforementioned mo-cap.

The VFX team also looked at “real gorillas and what they do, but our gorilla is special. He has to have a certain personality to him,” Kevorkian tells us.

And that personality has to come in a believable package. Kevorkian maintains that audiences want visual effects to look seamless, regardless of which screen they’re watching. They “go to the theater to watch Avengers: Age of Ultron,” he explains, “then come home to watch Flash. The fans are always my first priority. They’re expecting a certain level of how things should look.” In other words, they’re expecting both Ultron and Grodd to look equally realistic.

For The Flash, all the “believability” work takes place at Encore Hollywood. “All the work is done here. We have a large team of artists with various skills – trackers, 3D guys, lighters, shaders, render guys. We have a huge team of compositors. We have it all,” Kevorkian tells us.

That’s not the only part of the team he credits. He recounts that the show’s producers, including DC’s own Geoff Johns, gave him an early heads-up about what to expect. “After we completed the pilot, we got together to talk about what we’d be doing throughout the year, as well as listing some of the villains they were planning on using, including Grodd.”

Kevorkian’s team looked at comic panels to get a sense of iconic Flash visuals, including images where Grodd held the Scarlet Speedster over his head.

Flash actor Grant Gustin also pitches in on the VFX side, since often his “shots are a combination of him lying on a green screen. Sometimes he’s completely green screen, and Grant will give us the last few moments of him stopping really fast.”

Kevorkian and his Encore team are already busy looking at even more comic book panels, since they’ve been enlisted to deliver the VFX work for the upcoming Supergirl series. Presumably that will double their chances for more Emmy nods, though Kevorkian has already won previously, as part of the Banshee VFX team.

As for Flash, Kevorkian says “it’s like we’re kids in a great big sandbox getting to play.” And this sandbox is certainly drawing attention from the Television Academy.