Face Off Season 10

Cafe Society
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This week: First individual challenge and first Focus Challenge. They have to take a secret agent and transform them to be unrecognizable.

Apparently Mr. Westmore has done this kind of transformation work, both for the government (not discussed except hinted at), police undercover work, and even private citizens, like Michael Jackson.

Interesting anecdote about a guy saying he had a masquerade party, then went to Las Vegas to hold up a casino. Doh!

Anyway, this is a very different challenge than “monster of the week” or “cartoon character” or “demon time”. Realism is the most important factor, with application being crucial to that.

They brought in Gale Anne Hurd as a guest judge. She’s a producer for “The Walking Dead” as well as a new SyFy show.

Given there are still so many contestants, this will be a long list. Also, my basic review is that there is a lot of bad here and not much good. Realism is difficult for some reason. I guess there’s uncanny valley going on. We can only guess at what’s real for a lizard person or whatever, but we know what a human looks like. This one is definitely graded on a curve.

Anna, Agent Scamman: There’s something off here. The texture below the cheeks is off, and the nose is too smooth, no nasal folds (creases at the sides). The coloring and paint seem okay, and the hair laying for the eyebrows and beard are pretty good. There’s something weird on the right side of the mustache, but that could just be lighting. Safe.

Katie, Agent Phillips: This one has real problems. Very fake. The coloring is bad, teh shapes of the sculpture draw attention, and the finish is glossy. It looks like polished wood, a marionette. I will say the mustache and eyebrows are excellent, and I don’t have a problem with his hair, though Neville is a bit worried it sticks up high. (Neville: “It’s possible that somebody could have that big of hair.” Glenn: “I’m sitting right here.”) Honestly, I think if the coloring and shiny finish were better, this would be acceptable. The judges think the shininess is an excuse to make him look sweaty, so they interpret a goof as intentional. Bottom Look.

Walter, Agent Visscher: Overall, this isn’t too bad. The biggest issue to me is the shadowing for the “beard stubble” bothers me. And his eyebrows are kinda stuck on. Otherwise, this is passable. The judges don’t say much about it except that the edges are pretty decent. I don’t know why they don’t keep this one for Top Look, as to me it looks better than Robert’s, but they make him Safe.

Rob, Agent Johnson: My first impression is I don’t like the cut of his beard, but I think it’s just a style preference and lighting. This one has a lot of realism in paint and hair laying. The forehead seems long to me and the hairline not convincing, but he could just be a balding man wearing a wig. Overall, though, this is by far the best, the most realistic. And the judges praise it for achieving the look of normalcy and invisibility through boringness. Top Look.

Robert, Agent Popzlateva: This model is a really skinny girl that Robert decides to transform into an Asian man. I don’t like it much. The skin looks too monotone, no speckling and whatnot, and the hair laying doesn’t look that great to me. It feels more like a stereotype than a real person, with the teeth and the glasses and the fu manchu. But for some reason the judges praise it. Neville says the nose and forehead are very well matched in color and texture, even though the forehead is hers but the nose is an appliance. Ve likes the hair application for some reason. They give it Top Looks. I would call it safe.

Yvonne, Agent Fuller: Her agent is transformed into a rock star, with long hair and leather jacket and guitar. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the texture, maybe the paint, but something looks fake to me, rubbery. But overall she used subtle forms to change the shape of his face, even though he already had a strong jaw. The judges aren’t even shown discussing this one, so I don’t know what they don’t like about it. I also feel this one is better than Robert’s. Safe.

Njororge, Agent Ansdell: I was getting this one confused with the other girl transformed to Asian male, but this one is far worse. The nose is hideous, the texture on the cheeks is bad, the contours to make eyefolds don’t work, and the hair laying is atrocious. He used stiff hair, and that makes it worse. This is piss-poor work all around. Glen says the edges are horendous, and Gale says the choice to make an Asian male gave design problems. I think that’s a polite way to say the eye folds are a disaster. What’s also troubling is that he likes this result, and can’t see how bad it is. Bottom Look.

Melissa, Agent McDonough: This is the most puzzling result, because part is good and part is horrible, almost a line across the face like two different people did the work. The lower part of the face does a pretty good job adding aging with saggy neck and frown lines on the face. But the skin around the eyes is too pale, and then there’s just disaster on the forehead where she tries to move the eyebrows up and creates a double eyebrow effect. The judges call her for more discussion just so they can point out that inconsistency, then send her away Safe.

Johnny, Agent Morales: The huge dred wig helps hide this one, but the shape of the nose and lips are troublesome and the texture is odd. No judge’s comments here, either. Safe, only because there are several terrible ones.

Kaleb, Agent Wright: The paint is horrible. The shapes feel cartoony. And then the edges crumple when she opens her mouth wide under judge instructions. Eyebrows look kinda stuck on. Judges hate it. Bottom look.

Mel, Agent Stiles: She decides this is a great excuse to do an old age make up. Generally, when someone tries to insert their pet project, it doesn’t go well. This one bites off too much work. The folds and wrinkling are terrible. The paint and hair are survivable. This one also does not show judge comments. Safe.

Winner: Rob by a large margin. Nobody else is close.

Eliminated: Njoroge.

All three had really bad work this week, so telling them apart on quality is difficult. Kaleb had a worse application, he was clearly having a bad week, but he’s had two high looks. Njoroge has been Bottom looks twice before, and also the fact that he couldn’t tell his was bad may have factored in.

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Wow. I agree that this was a bad week. It may be somewhat tough to judge alien facial structures or bone structures but humans? I think the top looks were the only ones that even looked human to me. The rest were so bad!

I think it was the application that killed most of them with horrible edges and bad paint work.

I did agree with Njoroge’s elimination, both for his thinking it looked good (really? just shoving pre done facial hair on and not doing individual?) and his work hasn’t been good up until now.

Thanks again, Irishman, for the summary!

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Who knew that realistic was so hard to do?

And yeah, it did seem odd that a focus challenge, in which contestants are judged primarily on paint and edges, had more bad edges than any recent episode I can think of. Stuff was peeling up left and right.

I thought Rob’s was close to perfect, as well as — as the judges kept pointing out — nondescript, which was the point of the challenge. I thought the bottom half of Melissa’s was perfect. Unfortunately, the top half was the worst thing in the room.

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I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why Njoroge chose a wig with a female hairstyle when he was making the character male. The finished product was dreadful and his satisfaction with it was baffling.

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I think most of the contestants lost sight of the real challenge. They all heard “Change this person’s appearance” but mostly glossed right over “for an undercover investigation.” We wound up with a bizarre collection of mutants, misfits and outcasts. Dress them up in dirty clothes and this exact same set of makeups would have worked just as well for “Create a survivor of a nuclear world war.”

I’m sorry to see that the German guy did well. After blaming his mistakes on other people, I was really hoping we could see him off.

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To be fair, the challenge was to make them “unrecognizable”. Generally that is not just giving them a bump on the nose or make the chin protrude a bit. That gives the impression of making significant changes to the facial shape.

Some of them were in the ballpark on that score. The guy who decided to make his guy a rock star had a decent shape change to the face, just missed some application details. But conceptually it’s a bit whackadoo. Maybe he was going undercover at an IHeartRadio concert trying to find drugs or something.

Several thought gender change from female to male. This has two benefits. First, it theoretically makes them more unrecognizable, and second, it is easier to build up a narrow face with bigger features than to take a masculine face and shave some off.

Generally, you need to do something with the nose, cheekbones, chin, hair. Skin tone would be good, but it has to be realistic. Using a huge wig to hide half the face is a good disguise, and hides edge lines and such, too. Except that has the disadvantage of being less subtle. Big hair draws attention.

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FYI, Face Off is on Wednesday this week for some reason.

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I thought this week was hideous.

I actually could not stop laughing at Katie’s design. He was a janitor/conquistador/god knows what. He literally could not have blended in anywhere. It was almost as if she was supposed to make the most conspicuous person possible. I was laughing uncontrollably at her final product.

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Hmmm… no summary yet on parasitic alien bursters?

Maybe that’s for the best. This latest episode makes the undercover fiasco look good. I really think the judges should have made a double or triple elimination and let us enjoy a bonus episode or two showcasing the few contestants who know what they’re doing and listen to the instructions.

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Sorry, I watched it, but haven’t had time to summarize.

Briefly, I think this week was a mess. The only one that really fit the premise to me was the winning one, where the creature was bursting out of the back of the head.

The one where the skin shed off was quality work with creative sculpt, good paint, color, and all that. I just think that was more being transformed from within rather than something bursting out of.

The split face was bad for all the reasons the judges stated.

The bulbous head with the brain worms was stupid and poorly done. I was hoping Robert would get the axe, but I have to concede that the cowl and cowl application was the worst part, which is saying something given the brain worm. But what really bugged me, the line on the forehead was not laying well and was obvious, so it looked like Robert decided to draw it in with black. WTF? “I guess they’re going to see it, might as well point it out.”

Didn’t really like the other one, either. The chest burster had some detail lost in the gore, the spin was decent concept, but the overall blend wasn’t good, and the head was bad. Looked like a lumpy mat draped over his face, not something erupting from within.

Oh, and slime. I loved the idea of using highlighter ink so the slime glowed. AWESOME!

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I agree about the quality this week.

I was happy that the people who got immunity didn’t sit on it and got top looks. I can see where it would look like something transforming than bursting, which is probably why they didn’t win.

The winners was certainly good and I was surprised Glenn called him on winning two in a row. Good for him!

Yes, the seam on Katie’s was terrible.

The split face was bad but I assume the technicality of it is what saved them. The chest burster was okay but obviously didn’t fit with the rest of it.

The slime idea was fun, though, and we wanted to know more about the ingredients they had and what they did!

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Okay, summary time. :wink:

Starting with the Spotlight Challenge: working in teams of two, in the vein of “Alien”, “The Thing”, and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, make an alien infestation that bursts from the model, and use a picture of a real microscopic parasite as inspiration. Guest advisor: Lance Henriksen, actor famous for being in sci-fi films.

I will mention that the parasite pictures chosen are very distinctive and inspirational for an alien.

After work begins, Mackenzie and Lance come back and interrupt them to give them the first Foundation Challenge of the season. They have to create Slime from the materials provided, to incorporate into their alien design. Because good alien infestations should be slimy. The Foundation Challenge will assign immunity to the winner, but in a new twist, both partners in the team get immunity. Lance says he will be judging by “texture, color, does it work in the way you intended it to”.

Mel & Melissa: They start with applesauce, corn starch, and glycerin. Yummy. And then they find vetinary lube. Yes, that’s gonna be good for goopy cling. Lance comments on how much stretch it has.

Johnny & Walter: They start with laundry detergent, which apparently starts clumping good. And then Johnny adds flocking, the secret ingredient to give texture. Shhh, don’t tell anyone. Theirs is very stretchy and Lance says it has some strength to it.

Kaleb & Rob: They take applesauce and corn starch and end up with something very thick and goopy and green. Theirs is very brown with lots of speckly pieces in it. Lance fakes like he does a taste test.

Katie & Robert: Katie takes corn syrup as the base, and then she uses a yellow highlighter to provide a fluorescent ink. It looks cool on the color perspective.

Anna & Yvonne: They mix up detergent, corn syrup, glycerin, and a lot of glue, but it’s watery. So they add methylcellulose and glycerin to thicken it. Turns out still fairly runny.

Overall, Lance likes Johnny & Walter’s for chunky, thick texture, and Mel & Melissa’s for the color. Winner: Mel & Melissa.

Now back to the infestation design.

As usual, Mr. Westmore gives lots of great, specific advice. Much of it involves edges of skin, making sure it’s visible, that it looks pushed out or torn or pushed in or stretched.

Results:

Mel & Melissa, Enoplid Nematode: The cowl had pretty good form, the face has creative lippy folds and human teeth lining the edges. It’s more inspired by than direct translation of the reference image. The texture is shiny, the color choices are good, and the paint job works well. My one criticism is conceptual. They make the bursting out at the head, and the woman’s skin shed off on the shoulder, bunched up and loose. That, to me, is less alien bursting out and more transformation from within. But I guess it is okay with this premise of alien parasite. Workmanship, I’m less thrilled with the human skin from the face. I guess skin would bunch up weirdly if torn free from the skeletal structure in one large lump. Overall it is a successful and well done make up. Top Look.

Johnny & Walter, Tardigrade: This one looks pretty bad to me. They combine two concepts, a “chest-burster” as well as a growth on the head. I had to go back and look at the reference picture to see the form connections. The lumpy growth out of the head looks like a big floppy sock hat or beret, the form isn’t very distinct. The edges from afar don’t look like they’re pushing through the skin, they look like they are overhanging it. Makes the application look bad. The shape of the chest burster isn’t convincing to me. “Too much gags, not enough form.” Their one good point is the motorized part spewing blood and slime. They get Safe. I’m not sure I would have gone that far.

Katie & Robert, Taenia Taeniaeformis: The dreaded brain worm, i.e. Hans. Because Robert names everything. This one did not turn out well. Katie is going for pustulous tumors on the head, and I think the color difference from the face is intended to show where the tissue is infected and swollen versus where it isn’t. But the sculpt is an indistinct blob that has no definition, worse than Walter’s, and the edge line is a bit thick. And it looks like the cowl shifts forward a bit, stretching around the temples and accentuating the line. And then Robert sees that it’s obvious and want’s to do something, so bizarrely he decides to draw the line in with dark paint. WTF? I think it’s Robert, the camera shows only close ups, but I think I see glasses. I think I would have tried to smear slime on it or something to cover it up, but drawing it in? As far as the brain worm, it’s a pretty direct translation of the worm form, except with some hokey tentacles. This one is pretty bad. Bottom look.

Anna & Yvonne, Lepidonotopodium Piscesae: They want to do the alien bursting out of one side of the face and head. First big fail: splitting the face right down the centerline. Organic things shouldn’t be so cleanly symmetric. Second fail: It’s supposed to be bursting out of the skin, but there’s no skin pulled back or falling off. Third fail: the beaky mouth of the alien aligns right with the teeth of the model. Is that supposed to suggest the teeth are transformed? Also, the lumpy protrusions around the head are kinda formless. And the unaffected side is oddly bald and tall. It’s a conceptual and design mess, though the application seems good. Bottom look.

Kaleb & Rob, Neris Sandersi: This one I like. First off, they take Lance’s comment about how the fear is in the anticipation and then reveal, so they go with bursting out of the back of the head, so the reveal is when he turns around. Good choice, and unexpected. Second, the sculpts show good form of tentacles under the skin and bursting out of the skin in different places. Third, the paint in the face looks like a distressed, unhealthy face, including the contact in the eye. Top Look.

Top Team: Rob & Kaleb, with win going to Rob.

Eliminated: Katie, because of the fails in the sculpt and application of the cowl. I’m a bit torn, I wish Robert was eliminated, mostly because of his drawing the line in. However, the quality of the cowl was the worst stuff, so she’s the one to go.

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Mel & Melissa: Overall, I liked their design. I could buy that the alien is bursting out of someone’s head, well maybe not really bursting, but let’s say slowly pushing out … I was a little mixed on the human face drape thing. It was successful in getting the concept across, sure, okay, it was clear to me this used to be the woman’s own actual human face, but I’m not sure it would really just fall like that, like when you’re taking off a sweater.

Johnny and Walter: Admittedly, I didn’t quite get where they were going with this. Is it bursting out the chest, or out the head? Why would an alien have two weird exit paths? I guess maybe it’s causing a secondary head issue, but why? The drill part looked too mechanical to me, I don’t read it as organic at all, even alien organic.

Katie and Rob: I am already so, so, tired of Rob’s weird affect. And the naming. Nothing about this seemed to be working at all. Katie’s part was clearly the worst of the bunch, there’s nothing to debate about her going home. I feel like there might have been something they could do to make the cowl line less obvious, but Rob was in a bizarre panic and his suggestions were weird.

Anna and Yvonne: This week, they also had that blindness where they seemed pleased with their make-up. To me, this was the one that looked the least like what it was supposed to be. It looked like a guy succumbing to an illness, or transforming into something else. The side that was supposed to be the alien didn’t look enough (at all) like its own creature.

Kaleb and Rob: I thought this was good, it was better than most, I thought it was about the same as Mel and Melissa’s, EXCEPT for that weird (in a good way) tentacle neck thing on the back, which was awesome and Rob deserved the win for it.

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So I’m behind…

The challenge last week was to take inspiration from an obituary to create a whimsical ghost a la “Beetlejuice” that comically demonstrates the manner of their death. This is an individual challenge.

Yvonne, Jerry Rig: I’m less thrilled with this one than the judges seemed to be. The yellow color didn’t make sense to me, but they took it as the whimsy poking through. I don’t know how a hole saw binding and twisting the face would lead to death. I guess it’s fairly obvious that the wrinkling is caused by twisting up, though the part under the chin and left side of face seem off to me. But the really bad part is that the hole saw is backwards to create twisting in that direction. The teeth are sharp on the leading edge - that is how they cut. Going backwards, it would slip over the skin, not dig in and bind. I know, that’s a small detail in the grand scheme of things, but it is glaring to me. I suppose, given the competition, it might be one of the better ones this week. Judges give Top Look.

Johnny, Sara N. Geti: Safari worker trampled in African stampede. I have to agree with the judges, boring and a bitt puzzling. She was trampled by a stampede, but we only get a couple of distinct hoofprints, and then some porcupine spines because, hey, why not? Why would a porcupine be involved in a stampede of zebras, antelope, and giraffes? Wasted opportunity. Bottom Look.

Kaleb, Finn Waters: A scuba diver with a fish on his head. This is pretty bad. The fish is poorly shaped and doesn’t look a lot like a fish. The face is solid smurf blue. Could have been a lot better with, say, a squid wrapped around his neck and head. Bottom look.

Melissa, Suzanne Stitches: Not the best inspiration to work from. Pins sticking out all over is at least amusing, if hard to see how fatal. I would have tried falling into a loom or getting tangled in a sewing machine or something, but this is okay. No judge comments. Safe.

Rob, Wendy Wand: This is pretty good. The black and white worked for this choice. I agree with Neville that more extreme would have been better, but this was still very good. I also approve the quality of the eyebrow work. Top Look.

Mel, Sally Slopes: Once again, Mel takes on too much of a challenge. The twisted up body is very difficult to make look convincing, and her approach is ridiculous. She sculpts and molds a full leg and hip set, only to cover it all up with pants. What a waste of time and effort. And she put so much into that gag, that she misses all the parts that sell a death by freezing that would tie in with skiing. The makeup on the face looks nothing like frostbite, which we’ve seen done on this show a number of times. And not really her fault, but could the prop team have found a smaller set of skis? Bottom Look.

Robert, Thomas Watts: Death by electrocution, so he dropped his hairdryer in his bathtub. Nothing really inspired. He sculped a rubber ducky - hello prop department! Not great, but I suppose not a disaster. Safe.

Walter, Seymour Sharp: Juggling accident. Whee! His clown was a pretty good clown, but the juggling part was lame. I agree the bowling ball dented head would have been hard to read, but the knives through the face is wasting the opportunity. Plus, the knife attachment wasn’t considered so it didn’t work right, and what is presumably one knife blade through is face moves into clearly two pieces, so that didn’t work. Would have been funnier with machetes sticking out of his torso or something. And edited for time, so no judge comments. Safe.

Anna, Rose Mary: A cooking accident. It’s clear what it is, and the aging worked okay, but the singing on the hair could be better. Safe.

Winner: Yvonne. I would have picked Rob.

Eliminated: Johnny. Mel and Kaleb had design and application issues, but Johnny’s was uninspired and didn’t get any aspect of the challenge.

Looking at records, there’s a lot of variation. Rob has had consistently good work. Mel’s actually doing pretty well overall, except when she takes on too much like the disguise challenge and this one. I feel Robert is destined to be eliminated soon. Johnny seems to be struggling as well. His only Top look was working in a team with Melissa and Rob, both of whom are strong contestants.

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The switch from Tuesday to Wednesday has been disruptive in our house. Who knew a one night change in a reality show would be such a big deal? We will survive, I’m sure.

Yvonne and Jerry Rig: I don’t know that much about how saws work, so visually it came together for me – it’s a saw, and it’s twisty. That’s all I need to know. I was also concerned she went way too monochrome, but the judges seemed okay with that being part of the whimsy. I thought overall it was very good, but I personally preferred …

Rob and Wendy Wand, which I thought fit the challenge perfectly, and looked amazing. Whimsical and a little haunting. Agreed he could have gone even bigger (wasn’t that an actual Beetlejuice gag – the top half sitting next to the bottom half on a couch?)

Melissa and the sewing lady wasn’t really doing it for me, although I thought it was one of least clear obituaries of the bunch, so that seemed like a disadvantage. Robert and his stupid duckie annoyed me (and then the judges mentioned it, which annoyed me even more. Don’t encourage him!). I felt like I didn’t see enough of Walter and the juggling guy to have a good sense of it. Anna and Rose Mary (the cooking accident) seemed bland enough.

With the bottom looks, Johnny, Kaleb and Mel, I agreed with the judges that of two poor designs, Johnny’s should send him home. It was so boring and didn’t make any sense. For Mel, even I could tell at the very beginning she was doing WAY too much work on the wrong aspect. I didn’t hate Kaleb’s as much as the judges … it obviously wasn’t great, but I wouldn’t have batted an eye if it was safe. Is my sense correct that we don’t usually have a different number of top looks and bottom looks? It felt unbalanced to me.

I don’t think this is an ironclad rule, but in a very general sense, I have the impression that when the judges are looking at bottom looks, they will be more harsh with someone who didn’t do enough work, giving those who did too much work a very slight advantage.

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Am I wrong, or does Robert seem to generate one similar prop in every challenge, skimping on the rest of the work? Last week was the rubber ducky, the week before that was the brain worm, and I seem to recall him playing around with some other similar prop on an earlier challenge. The gags might work if they were really well done and integrated into the makeup, but so far that hasn’t been the case. I agree that Robert is on the short list for elimination.

So far, I don’t find myself voting for any of the contestants and I haven’t really been impressed by any of the work this season. Not sure if it’s an underperforming class, or if they’ve just done all the good challenges already.

Last week was kind of a train wreck – I don’t think they had enough room at the bottom for all the candidates. I sort of agree with the top candidates, except how does one “fall on a hole saw”? Possibly the least convincing back story ever.

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Yes, it’s even in the image they show for the premise set up. However, the obit was about a magician’s assistant, so it’s hard to fault him for a lack of originality there.

Seemed like a lack of a premise to work with.

You knew it had to come up. But that being the only good part of his make up should be a sign. It’s a prop that could have been requested from the prop guys. It has nothing to do with the make up of the character, and it being missing wouldn’t change the character one iota. Having it didn’t push his character to a higher level. I rather wish they’d made that comment to him.

It was a clown make up that looked pretty good as a Depression era bum clown. He had a knife blade sticking out of the top of his head, and a blade sticking down out of his jaw and in at the side of his face. He didn’t plan how to attach his appliances well, so had to break off the handles of the knives because they were too heavy and pulled the appliances. And then the alignment didn’t work when he opened his mouth, and the top part of the knife blade pointed at a different angle than the lower part. Overall, it was a weak concept that was technically flawed in design, but was a consistent story and didn’t waste effort on pointless things that didn’t help that story.

I think they felt it crossed the line because the fish hat was so poorly executed and it detracted from the humor of the concept.

Usually they aim for 2 to 3 top looks and 2 to 3 bottom looks. If it’s a team project, there might be 2 teams each way, with 2 or 3 on each team. Typically, it is reasonably balanced between Top and Bottom, but occassionally there will be a challenge like this, where they have to stretch to find a second Top Look and have a surplus of Bottom Looks to choose from.

Yes, the amount of work that went into a result is a contributing factor in their evaluation. If someone tries something huge and falls short, they get more credit for attempting but a stern warning to do a better job at fitting the time they have. But someone who does very little and has a poor application or flawed concept gets hammered. If you go minimal, it has to be clean, and it has to really fit the challenge.

Repeatedly shooting big and failing will get you sent home, however, as it shows an inability to learn.

[QUOTE=Finagle]
So far, I don’t find myself voting for any of the contestants and I haven’t really been impressed by any of the work this season. Not sure if it’s an underperforming class, or if they’ve just done all the good challenges already.
[/QUOTE]

I think the challenges have been fine and even creative - the disguise challenge comes to mind as truly original this season. But I agree the results haven’t matched what we’ve seen from some prior seasons. However, I think there has been at least one season that was worse as far as overall quality of results.

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This week: the return of The Gauntlet: the three phase challenge. New this time, the Top Looks for each stage are Safe and don’t have to continue the challenge.

Stage 1: Use a mythical ship as inspiration for a Pirate Captain character, but the design requires a hand-laid beard. Ships: the Manjet Barge (Egyptian), The Naglfar (Viking), The Flying Dutchman, The Nautilus (2000 Leagues Under the Sea). Two captain models from each ship come out wearing costumes, the challenge is to add a beard and make up.

Rob, Naglfar: Lays in a nice, reddish beard with braids. Neville praises his cut for being coarse and “lived in”.

Melissa, Manjet Barge: She lays in a narrow beard at the chin, and colors the skin with gold. She says she wanted to stay true to the Egyptian motif of narrow beards. The judges praise her for making it fit and not looking like she was just trying to shirk by doing little work.

Robert, Flying Dutchman: Robert makes up a rediculous name for his captain, German for “dishwasher”, because his captain was cursed by his wife for not doing the dishes. Sigh They praise his mustache work, and the subtle scar action he puts into it.

Walter, Naglfar: Nice bushy beard with mixed colors and good tones for the skin, plus paint on the face to tie it together. Glen comments it could go on stage and you wouldn’t notice it is layed on.

Yvonne, Manjet Barge: Good technique in applying hair, edge really broken up and natural looking. Face paint could be better and the braid with the gold wrap could be better, but conveys the idea.

Mel, Nautilus: Wacky greenish sideburns down the jaw but no chin beard. Not good.

Kaleb, Flying Dutchman: Decent looking beard from what we’re shown.

Anna, Nautilus: Black man, gives him a bushy beard along the jawline and neck and under the lip, but the cheeks are shaved clean. Looks weird.

Top Looks: Walter and Melissa. They are Safe and go home to relax, and will go out to dinner later.

Stage 2: Using Pandora’s Box as inspiration, they get a box of prefab prosthetics. They have to use the three pieces to create a cohesive character, but the trick is they cannot use the prosthetics in the way they were intended. This challenge is all about understanding the pieces as shapes and forms for creative inspiration. Cool.

Kaleb: His first inspiration was “witch”, but by the time he’s done he calls it a “Cat-Elf hybrid”. I think he realized the shapes didn’t look right. But this is actually pretty good. The nose is a chin piece, the brow piece is cut and applied to the jawline, and a neck piece is cut and formed into pointy ears. The shapes strangely work for an elf character, and the purple with white highlights looks good.

Rob: Roguish alien smuggler. He puts the nose on the chin (most do that), the browpiece along the jawline, and two cheek pieces to the forehead to make interesting ridges. The judges like the creativity with the cheek pieces and how they are applied, and the color choices and spatter work.

Robert: Another crazy character name. He got ears and put them at the eyebrows to make horns, a chin piece on the forehead, and then the forehead and nose he inverted and put on the chin below the nose. Overall I think he did the best with his pieces, and the ears to eyebrows work great. I don’t like his paint job because the appliances don’t match the underlying skin, and so they stand out too obviously, especially around the mouth. If he’d evened the color out this would be better. But the judges love it for some reason.

Anna: She made a witch. She put the nose piece on the chin, she had a jaw with teeth that she put across the forehead as a trophy kind of thing, then she had an upper lip she put on the neck to make a weird wrinkly fold. I give her credit - she was the only one with that awkward teeth thing and I don’t know what I would have done with it. The judges are mixed on her use of the upper lip on the neck. I don’t care for it.

Mel: Weird alien. She put the nose piece on the chin, she cut a chin piece in half and made bags under the jaw, and put a browpiece to the ears. Glen isn’t happy with the bags under the neck. Ve likes the rusty color on the head, but I don’t. I think this one is a mess.

Yvonne: They don’t show us anything about her result. Some description during work, she puts an eye mask around the jaw, a nose she puts under the lip on the chin, and then some nasal labial folds framing the eyes.

Top Looks: Rob and Robert. I think Kaleb actually had a better result than Robert, mostly on paint job. Oh well.

Stage 3: Take three models and do up See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil into a horrific make up that embodies the phrase.

At this point, just looking at who is left, I picked Kaleb to be eliminated based on past record. Anyway,

Anna: She goes for an undead zombie thing on snowy winter characters. Speak No Evil has the jaw all ripped up, but it just looks like a cluttered mess stuck on top of his face, and it seems too stark a line between the damage and the rest of the face. See No Evil has one eye gouged out. The model’s other eye looks strange. Hear No Evil has the ears all ripped up. Also, her color palette for their skin is weird, and the texture is glossy. They look artificial. It’s confusing. Bottom Look.

Kaleb: He decides to play with the motif and make demons that try to get their victims to do the proscribed acts. Okay, but his result is just a mess. First off, it doesn’t look like a cohesive set to me. Second, he fails to do the prime element of the challenge, which is to embody the three elements. His See NE just has black paint around the eyes, presumably like tears or something, but we clearly see her eyes. His Speak NE has some weird jaw damage that doesn’t look like an injury or a disease. And his Hear NE has the ears hidden by hair. This is just a mess all around. Bottom Look.

Yvonne: She decides her characters were torturers working for the king, and the peasants revolted and turned on the torturers, and used acid on them. So they are ghosts. The costumes are a bit strange, but they were pulling things off the costume racks in the shop, so I can’t fault it too bad. What is impressive on this one is that she made her face prosthetics out of bald caps, so her See NE has bags and scars around the eyes, her Speak NE has the mouth smoothed over and partially grown together, and her Hear NE has the ears all scarred up. She does a great job giving a cohesive look, looking like ghosts, and manifesting the three elements of the challenge. I also want to comment she was the most behind going into last looks and managed to get a solid paint job together almost completely there. Top Look.

Mel: Hers is probably the best embodiment of the challenge for a horrific approach to the motif. Her characters give up a sense as part of a religious ceremony dedication to God, so they have flaps of skin peeled back and sewn over the offending orifices. She has skin pulled down from the forehead over the eyes of See NE, skin pulled up from the neck and sewn over the mouth for Speak NE, and skin torn from the cheeks and folded back over the ears on Hear NE. She also did a great job of giving texture and color to look like muscle and the underside of the skin, and she did a good job of matching the flaps of skin to the source locations and creating the negative space to look like the flaps are lifted. This is definitely a cohesive set. Top Look.

Winner: Mel. Maybe one of the best results this season.

Eliminated: Kaleb. No surprise.

39

Awesome, the Gauntlet!

Stage 1: I really liked this challenge. I thought having the supernatural ships was a cool idea (so cool, actually, that I wish they had used it for a spotlight challenge). And I liked that all the contestants had a very specific thing they had to do, a beard.

Melissa I absolutely agreed with, her beard was spot on, and even though it was a narrow beard, it looked exactly like what it was supposed to, and seemed natural.

Walter’s beard was good, although to me it seemed about equal with Rob’s, and I felt like it was a coin toss.

Stage 2: The downside of the Gauntlet is that some of this stuff is so quick, you don’t really get to see everyone’s in an in-depth way. I guess the trick here is to put the nose on the chin. I’m not sure any of them really stood out as AWESOME to me, even the best ones seemed OKAY. I’m glad Rob got the win because I was worried he would faint or something (he seemed quite dramatic about the anxiety). You know I was dying that goofy Robert also won, but I can’t argue that there was another design that was better.

Stage 3: I thought it was odd that Mackenzie introduced this as an expression that one hears often, but seldom sees visually represented … um, the three monkeys thing is really common and in the general category of “folk expressions” this is probably up there in how well-known the visual image is. ANYWAY.

Anna’s undead zombies do not look undead or like zombies. Next.

Kaleb, well, I can see why he went home. He decided to put a spin on the challenge … which I think is cautiously okay, but you really, really have to nail it for this to work with the judges. His characters didn’t even seem like they went together that much.

Yvonne, this was great. Using the skull caps for all three was practical, and also brought them together in a thematic way. I think the single creepiest design of the entire stage was her Speak No Evil who looked like his mouth was fusing together.

I thought Mel’s concept was stellar – that this was voluntary, ritualistic, and involved peeling off your skin. She did a great job at matching the skin peels to the parts that they were peeled off of … which seems a little obvious, but she was pressed for time, and was one person working alone, so I can imagine that many contestants would have been sloppy with this. HOWEVER, there is one area where I disagreed with the judges … the solid colors of the raw flesh seemed really blocky and weird to me. The darker red, where the skin was flayed FROM, was a good color choice, but it was so … uniform. I would have liked to see some more detail in what was under the skin, but maybe that was too much for a challenge with one person creating three characters. Also, the lighter pink … that looked like a cartoon to me. I would have wanted to see something mottled and scabby. Maybe some gross yellow pus. This priesthood CANNOT be sanitary, right?

40

Great summary, as usual, Irishman! Thanks!

LOVED this revised Gauntlet. I didn’t like how they scored last time, so was happy that the top people basically get a night off (safe) for the “main” challenge.

I haven’t been impressed by Kaleb, so was not sorry to see him go. As other said, points for creativity, but he failed to pull it off.

Mel’s final creation was awesome! Certainly details can be argued but it was good, from idea to execution for me. What I really liked was the model who did speak NE who kept shushing people! That made it even more creepy!

I was really impressed with Yvonne’s work this time, especially for how much she did in last looks. She has really stepped up her game, I think. And I really like the bad cap over the mouth! That was done well!

Yes to Anna’s not coming together well.

Still enjoy this show and look forward to it each week!