Skyland is a very clever series, It makes the watcher think.The animation is amazing, with some spectacular merges between painting and CGI, sadly however, the characters themselves let it down. I hope in the new series they look less pale and more natrually shaped.

It's hard to judge a show based on just 6 episodes, but I can say this much. Firstly, the French/Canadian 'Skyland' just looks absolutely amazing. I don't think I'd ever seen such jaw-dropping visuals in an animated TV series before. It aproaches or even surpasses Ghibli quality in some respects, and in fact there is a strong Ghibli influence in the floating aerial islands and aircraft. Sort of a cross between 'Castle in the Sky', 'Star Wars', 'Last Exile', and the inside cover to Yes's 'Close to the Edge'. Someone, somewhere coined the phrase 'strato-punk' to relate to this kind of thing, and maybe that phrase fits.

'Skyland' is a mixture of CGI and 2D. Mainly it's 3D characters and objects on top of backgrounds which are sometimes hand-painted, sometimes CGI. The objects (e.g the spacecraft/aircraft) and the backgrounds are just amazing. Cinema quality. As The Goodies once put it, 'amazingly amazing'. The big crunch, and what knocks a star of this score, comes with the characters. They are just horrible CGI. All planes and angles. Awful, awful, awful. And I've seen 3D TV that knocks spots off this, so don't tell me it can't be done. The actual body movements are very well done - motion capture, I assume - but the faces are... Jane and the Dragon, and I gave that 1.5 stars. Yuck!

The plot is interesting and somewhat convoluted, but sophisticated and interesting enough to capture the attention of an adult SF fan. After Mihla manages to send her two kids away, and they join the resistance against 'The Sphere', things get very interesting. The characters themselves are well fleshed out - it's just that they look horrible.

This is a really unique animated SF series. Absolutely stunning visually (except for the actual characters), and with an intriguing plot, let's hope the supposedly commisioned future episodes come into being, and that they get their act together with the 3D character animation.

Watch these guys. If they get their act together in a few crucial regards, they could produce a masterpiece. As it is so far, close but no cigar.