Face Off Season 10

Cafe Society
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After weeks of saying, “There isn’t a lot of talent in this bunch,” this week’s show was a breath of fresh air. I loved Melissa’s Egyptian guy, from the beard to the skin to the costume. And Yvonne’s and Mel’s final creations were both perfect. Head-to-head, I agree with giving Mel the win because the idea was so audacious, but there was nothing wrong with Yvonne’s work, either.

Did anyone else notice the usually useless “never before seen” footage bit? Apparently, “Geschirrspüler”* has been a catchword around the studio for a while.
*That’s the word Google translate gave me, but I’m not sure it’s the one they were using.

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This is a case where we just don’t get a good enough view of the detail work. I thought Robert’s looked a little too edged, but it was hard to tell when Glen was pointing out the scarring. I think they definitely showed us the better beards, but telling them apart in how they were layed and such was difficult. In particular for me, I couldn’t see Walter’s edges well and the paint obscured some of the beard, but the judges thought his was great. I’m not too unhappy with the results, though it could have gone to Rob to me very easily.

Most of them put it on the chin, because you want to aim for the centerline of the face to be roughly symmetrical. Robert put it on the forehead and one put it under the lower lip, but nobody seemed to consider cutting it in two and using it some other way, say framing the eyes or on the ears.

And I agree most of them were only okay. I think Kaleb’s was actually one of the better ones, but I’m not disappointed he is the one sent home.

Yeah, that was a little weird. This expression is pretty often represented by the three monkeys.

Agreed.

I give her high marks for what she accomplished in 5 hours with three people. She gave some texture to the underlying tissue. As for the underside of the skin, a couple years ago I sliced the tip of a finger off, just the tissue at the end but about 1/8 inch. After the bleeding stopped, the skin underneath was bright pink, just like that, and washing it during the healing meant it was clean with no visible scab. Yes, it looked very much like that. And I would expect them to attempt to be as sanitary as possible, with carving your own skin. They’re not trying to get an infection.

I did catch that, which likely contributed to Robert’s thinking to use it here.

For that matter, the word “Naglfar” for the Viking ship is spelled based on how they wrote it on the screen. But what they were saying sounded very different - “Nutbar” or something. Foreign words is weird. :wink:

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Maybe they felt they had to include some backstory to this, to appease the fans like me who are frothing over how contrived this guy is. :smiley:

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Robert does pretty good in challenges that play to his skill set but not so good otherwise. I wonder how much longer he can stick around.

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New week, new challenge: Pick a beautiful sorceress and show the monstrous or hideous evil underneath the magic.

Once again, I find this a creative way to stage what is essentially “monster of the week”.

Rob - The Dragon Queen: I’m a little torn on this one. He didn’t do a literal dragon with the lizard features and scales. Rather, the face is more classical demon. However, she does appear monstrous, and the application is flawless, and he did a lot of work. And the back piece is particularly well done, with the spine and the hint of wings forming on the scapula. Ve says she wishes he had made it a little more feminine, which he struggled with. I think part of the problem is his model has a big jaw already, so laying something on top will make it larger. Still, they give him Top Look.

Yvonne - Corpse Conjurer: She went for the look as if the skin was pulling back and the skeleton underneath becoming prominent. This one is very haunting and creepy. I give high marks for the sunken eyes, and the texture and finish of the skin and bone fusing together. I was a bit bothered by the description of the vertebra showing on the throat, but she was ambiguous enough that the judges didn’t seem to say anything one way or the other. The main thing that bothers me in the final product is the lips turning into teeth. Something there doesn’t quite work. Still, overall this is great. Top Look.

Anna - Shadow Enchantress: Um, yuck. Glen said the only thing she got right was the color choice of white face and black framing, and I agree. The head is too wide, the area around the lips not stuck down (which she realized but didn’t have time to fix), the general shape of the face doesn’t have any real plan to it to make it monstrous or hideous, and the spikes on the head don’t have any plan to them. Okay, she wanted the giant spikey crown to be actual horns, she should have made the horns really tall like the crown. And why make the back of the head bald? The design is incredibly lacking, and the application isn’t right. Bottom Look.

Melissa - the Wiccan of the Woods: This one is supposed to be a knotted woody tangle of burls and vines and whatnot. The design is a cluttered mess of nothing sensible. I don’t like the vines on one side, the color placement seems haphazard. It’s too distracting. I suppose the application and painting are good. The judges say there are some cool stuff going on. She gets Safe.

Mel - Temptress of the Flame: The beauty make up is good. The rest, not so much. I wasn’t thrilled with the concept of the big spiraled headdress to begin with, maybe curled like ram horns? The texture applied to simulate flame shapes isn’t very good, as Neville points out. I was intrigued by her attempt to make charred skin by blending coffee grounds into brown paint, but the result isn’t clear. Safe.

Robert - Sea Witch: The fin on the cheek is hard to justify. The rest of the transformed face has some good work in it. I like the stuff around the eyes. But the half-changed look detracts from the result, and doesn’t fit the challenge. And I don’t know what is going on with the other side of her face. The judges agree. Bottom Look.

Walter - Emerald Empress: I actually like this one. The busting out of the gemstones and the texture of the face look great. The judges don’t like the color choices. I think the part around the mouth should be the white like the rest of the skin. But I like the veining and she really looks sinister to me. Glen says there are way too many tones fighting with each other. When I see the side of her head at that point, I see what he means. He gets Safe.

Winner: Rob. Ultimately, the quality of the work is great and there is a lot of it.

Eliminated: Anna. Her design was not there and the application was flawed. Robert had design issues, but his application was good.

Eight weeks in, we can start looking at their records.

Rob is most likely to win. He has 3 Wins and 2 more Top looks, and no Bottom Looks.

Melissa is next, with 1 Win, 2 Top Looks, no Bottom Looks, and a Foundation Challenge win.

Mel is next with 1 Win, 2 Top Looks, 1 Bottom Look, and a Foundation Challenge win.

Walter runs right down the middle, with 1 singular Top Look and the rest is Safe. He has good work but not great work.

Yvonne is curious, because she has 2 Wins and a Top Look, but also 3 Bottom looks. However, she seems to be doing fairly well in the later challenges, so it feels like she is improving.

Then there is Robert. 1 Top look, and 4 Bottom looks. Statistics say he will be the next eliminated.

However, there is also a 1 time save this season that hasn’t been used yet. No telling when that will come into play, but we’re now far enough along into the season that it becomes more sensible to consider using it. Not for Robert or Walter, but if Mel or Yvonne stumble, maybe.

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Again, great summary as always, Irishman, so thanks!

Between Rob and Yvonne, I wanted Yvonne to win. I agree on the neck part but it seemed more original than Rob’s, which we have seen often. I can’t argue it but I wanted to see Yvonne win.

Speaking of Yvonne, I think it took several weeks in a row but she has really improved and the last several have been good. Earlier in the show, I wouldn’t have been surprised had she been eliminated but now I would.

I agree that Mel’s flames weren’t great. Those are hard to do and we haven’t seen many do them well.

I’m sick of Robert now. What was once kooky is now annoying to me. And I really hoped two things would happen. Either he would be the one eliminated, or they would save Anna. I was bummed they didn’t save Anna. I think she had the ability but this was a bad week.

Rob is definitely a contender for the finale.

I still want to see another Judge’s competition! I really enjoyed the last one.

vislor

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I appreciate the feedback.

Overall, I agree that Yvonne’s seemed more original. There was something generic about Rob’s face. However, the back piece was exceptional IMO, and that’s what sold his to the win.

She struggled on the first two. One of those was paired with Greg, who was eliminated. The second was paired with Robert, for the toy game man. Her third Bottom Look was week 5, paired with Anna, for the disease busting out of the head, the face split and the teeth poking out and the lumpy bumps. That might be suggestive, except they won week 3 together for the language challenge.

The other caveat on Yvonne is that one of her Top Looks was on the Gauntlet, stage 3. The problem with that is this time, since the two winners at each stage got Safe and didn’t have to compete, that actually cut down the field for the stage 3 challenge. Contestants who already beat her that stage were not competing. That puts an asterisk on that Top Look, IMO. I don’t fault the creativity of her ghostly trio, or that the final result was good quality, but we didn’t see what Rob or Melissa would have done.

Flames are difficult, no question. I certainly don’t know how to do it. The ones who have been successful have been more lava creatures than fire per se.

So, looking at Anna’s record,…

Week 1 she was a Top look paired with Melissa, for their Bounty Hunter.

Week 2 she was a Top Look paired with Mel for the watch cop. It seemed to me the best ideas on that came from Mel.

Week 3 she got a Top Look paired with Yvonne, for the language challenge. To me, the victory on that came down to (a) Yvonne’s headdress, which got her the win, and (b) the accidental choice to not use the teeth they made, because they were tearing up the mouth. They were praised for not putting anything in the mouth to obstruct the ability to speak.

Week 4 was the disguise challenge, where she was Safe. Hers wasn’t particularly good, but it wasn’t quite the disaster that three others were.

Week 5 was a Bottom Look paired with Yvonne on the alien disease.

Week 6 was her ghost who died from a kitchen explosion. It wasn’t bad, but not brilliant.

Week 7 was the Gauntlet. Stage 1 with the beards, she did the black Captain Nemo. Her beard is strange. Stage 2 was the Pandora’s box of appliances used creatively. She got kinda screwed with the jaw with the teeth, but didn’t do much with the other foldy piece. Stage 3 was the gory trio that she turned into frozen zombies, that looked like robots with poor wound designs. That gave her a Bottom Look.

Week 8 was her Shadow Enchantress that had no form and a mess of a face.

Okay, she had some ability, but it’s hard to point to anything she did that makes me go “Wow”.

Though there was another one that was clunky and poorly designed on the bounty hunter challenge that I was vaguely recalling, but it wasn’t hers, it was Yvonne and Greg’s. Oops.

I’m torn on the Saves. I think you keep that around for someone who is doing Wow work and has a disaster late in the game, rather than someone who does middlin’ work, and you don’t use it early when you’re whittling down and figuring out who has the talent to win. Otherwise, it feels like you’re just delying the inevitable. Using a Save on anyone prior would have felt like a waste.

Admittedly, Anna had three Top Looks in, and that gives the impression she could do well, but those were early in teams, and her later solo work was lacking. I suppose it wouldn’t have been the worst thing to use on Anna, but to me she was not a real contender, whereas if next week someone tanks worse than Robert, that’s when I’d drop the save.

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I thought it was another good challenge this week. Thanks Irishman for providing the recap!

I liked Rob’s dragon a lot. This is an issue that I am torn about whenever it comes up on the show – does the creature make-up look feminine enough? Who is to say what features would identify a dragon as masculine or feminine? But I get that in the language of film, the trope is to overlay human qualities on most creatures. It seems like Rob could have avoided this issue entirely by making the make-up snoutier. I agree with the judges that the back piece was really the punch on this make-up.

But, I personally, would have given Yvonne the win for her corpse conjurer. I thought this was great, so original and creative. I didn’t have a problem with the neck vertibrae – did you guys not like the concept, or the execution? Even though I have never thought about what a skin-skull combo would look like, this design was terrific because I got that concept immediately just by looking at it. I completely buy this as an actual demonic creature. To me, it was the best because it read as a completely real entity.

I agree Melissa’s wiccan was pretty lukewarm. I didn’t get the vines at all – they looked like something mechanical to me. I felt like they didn’t show enough of it on screen to appreciate the positive elements that the judges observed. But I agree it’s good enough I guess for safe.

I liked Mel’s more than the judges did. I thought the beauty make-up was one of the best we’ve seen. I agree the ram horn shape was a weird choice here, especially because flames wouldn’t curve around and DOWN, they would go UP. But I get why she liked that particular shape – it’s a good balance on a head, but I would have liked them better if she had passed on a flame attempt entirely, and I don’t know, kept the shape and made them glowing embers or something, as if they were being burned away. Although I liked it, I agree it wasn’t as good as either Rob’s or Yvonne’s, so safe it is.

Walter’s was a mix for me. I liked the shapes, but the colors were a weird way to go. It was too neon for me, and even though this is a color found in real life gemstones, I couldn’t see it as sinister or even slightly menacing. I would have liked this more if he had gone for that deeper jewel tone. I thought this didn’t come together at all. Safe, but I wouldn’t have protested if this had been switched with Robert for bottom looks.

Bringing us to Robert’s sea witch. I think it would have been possible to be successful with a half face transformation, but then I would expect the human side to be a really solid beauty make-up, and I don’t know what this was. The face fin was stupid. Even if he had made it a long, tendril-like fin swooping away from the face, I could buy it. But the perky little fin jutting out seemed cartoony. Minus the fin, I thought the look (on that side) was okay. I was annoyed (as always) because I could tell he was excited about his eel. I will LOSE MY MIND if the judges use their save to save Robert in a future episode. I get the impression that the show thinks his fruitcake act is appealing to the viewers.

But Anna’s was clearly the worst on the stage. I thought it looked like one of those off-brand knock-off toys that is supposed to be Maleficent. I understand what she was going for with the asymmetrical head things, and was hoping she would make them look like stalagmites. But they didn’t look rough enough to look like what I think she was trying to accomplish, and then the face was too thrown-together and the proportions were all off. Shadow enchantress was probably the most vague of the creatures – it seems like you could really interpret that a lot of ways (more than a sea witch or the flame one) but maybe Anna would have done better with something that had more obvious parameters. It was really awful.

Good observation about the Gauntlet – because the winners didn’t have to compete, it was thinning out the contestants too much (especially two winners each round!). It was nagging at me during that episode, but I couldn’t really articulate it.

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Well, sure, when you put it that way, it makes sense. :smack::o

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To be fair, Glen did say Robert needs to stop behaving like the class clown.

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…And that brings us to this week and the Genie challenge. I thought this was a tough challenge because there’s not much distinguishing a genie from a generic demon type. In fact, the Jinn are usually associated with Middle Eastern mythology and just about no one incorporated any of that in their work. So basically it came down to who had the best character that read mischievous/evil demon with motifs from the container. And really there were just two contenders for the top spot – the dragon-ish creature and the jar-headed demon. Either one could have been a winner in my estimation – we’re finally getting to the stage of the competition where some really fine work is being done.

I think Yvonne’s elephant genie was on the right track and it could really have been a top look if it hadn’t read so literally “elephant”. (It was also almost completely a mask, so I didn’t see much potential for emoting.)

Predictably, Robert went with a comic concept once again and the judges were not sympathetic. Nothing about it read “genie” and no special immunity was granted. I imagine if they’re going to use the immunity, it will be next week, as there are only a handful of competitors left. But then again, they usually have a “we’re going to eliminate two this week” episode to get the numbers down for the finale, so they may just end up not using it at all this season.

Once again, I note, contestants ended up helping each other out in a moment of stress. It’s the primary reason I watch this show – they focus on professionals being good at what they do, rather than attempting to backstab each other. It’s like the Democratic debate of reality shows.

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I agree, the almost entire lack of drama is one of the appealing things about this show.

The foundation challenge was creating Valkyrie make-ups. I felt like we saw even less of the work than we usually do in a foundation challenge. I thought Yvonne’s was good … I do not understand what the judge saw in Melissa’s that gave her the win. It seemed very flat and uninteresting to me.

The spotlight challenge seemed half-baked to me. As Finangle said, as far as I know, the genie concept is pretty solidly Middle Eastern, but it looked like the contestants were given a variety of bottles to work with, which struck me as odd. Throughout the evaluation, the judges commented a lot on things that “didn’t say genie” … but honestly, I’m not even clear what that would be without a straight up Middle Eastern look. I wish they would have articulated what they were looking for.

Agreed that Rob and Walter were clearly the top two, by a wide margin. I was leaning toward Rob’s as my favorite, because I thought it was slightly more cohesive and looked like a character with a story (although it didn’t particularly look like a genie to me, either).

I get the problems that Mel’s genie had, although I didn’t think it was in the same range of awful as Robert’s. With only six contestants left, though, someone has to be in the bottom. I thought it was too bad that she was advised not to go with the gazelle (which is definitely a Middle Eastern motif).

Melissa’s weird thing was worse than Mel’s IMHO, and she had immunity from the foundation challenge anyway. Even though she was attempting to mimic the design from the bottle, the patchy hole thing looked completely sketchy applied to the model’s body like that.

Yvonne’s elephant guy was … mixed. I was impressed that she managed an elephant face that seemed to really work with the size and shape of a human’s head … the proportions were right on. The paint job seemed very polished to me … but also boring. I wish there had been something about this design that was “an elephant … with a twist!” because there was no spin on this at all to make it interesting.

Robert’s genie was terrible, and didn’t look like a genie, nor a cat, nor anything good. You can imagine how relieved I was that he was eliminated and the judges did not opt to use their save.

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Robert’s cat mostly made me think of a masquerade ball, with people in fancy clothes holding up little masks on sticks while they pretend they don’t recognize each other. I think he could potentially have survived or even succeeded by making something funny. After all, the show offered Aladdin and Bewitched as two examples of genies. The core problem is that nothing said genie there at all - no reference to the bottle/lamp, no regional references, nothing.

I am very glad to see him go home finally.

All that said, I feel like many of the other designs also suffered from not being very genie-like, and I don’t understand why Michael Westmore’s advice didn’t address that much.

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I wondered if any of the contestants were hesitant to go straight up Middle Eastern for fear of crossing the line into negative ethnic stereotype. I don’t have a strong opinion on the issue, but I could imagine someone thinking that, especially working under such strict time constraints, that a Middle Eastern design element could potentially read wrong on stage. Yvonne used the pointy slippers, but that was about it.

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Okay, others have commented, but I’ll try to catch up anyway. :slight_smile:

Opening: walking into the shop and seeing all the models in fancy winged costumes. Something big is happening. Valkyries!

Okay, those huge white wings are impressive if difficult to actually act in. On the other hand, several of those wings look oddly placed, jutting out from the middle of the back.

Foundation Challenge - do the make up for the costume. Okay, I’m with Rob - I don’t know enough about the aesthetic to know what makes Norse. Oh well, wing it. (Har har).

Mel, black shoulder wings: Nice beauty make up, don’t know how it says Valkyrie or Norse.

Yvonne, yellow wings: I like this one. The color scheme works, the make up pops, and the feathers complement the costume.

Melissa, multicolored wings: Okay, I get the 3-D aspect to the symbol and how that is unusual, but otherwise it’s pretty bland. In particular, it’s just white on the forehead blended to the flesh toned lower face. I don’t get why he picks this as the win.

Walter, red wings: I really like this one. He does great red accents and great beauty make up. The judge wishes he’d done more red around the cheeks and jaw, but I think this is pretty good the way it is.

Robert, white wings: This one doesn’t do much for me. I appreciate his use of splatter for the blood from battle, and that was a nice touch, but the “war paint” is too neat and otherwise not particularly creative, and the rest is blah.

He gives Top Looks to Yvonne and Melissa, with Melissa getting immunity. I would have traded Melissa for Walter, and possibly given him the immunity. Oh well.

Spotlight Challenge: Pick a fancy vessel, and design the Genie that would live inside it.

Side note: Where did genies living in bottles/lamps come from? Wasn’t the idea in the original Aladdin story that the Djinn was trapped in the lamp (by a wizard?), and Aladdin set the Djinn free, thus earning the 3 wishes? Somehow that morphed to be that they live in bottles and anyone who finds it gets three wishes, or some variant.

Okay, my thought, what makes something a genie, besides it lives in a bottle and grants wishes? I’m thinking the straight animal hybrid isn’t the right approach for this challenge. That works for were-creatures or aliens and whatnot, but for this I would think something more exotic and creatively different would be better. These are mystical creatures, don’t get stuck on animal forms, be different. Mr. Westmore agrees. His advice to Mel was to move away from the gazelle/antelope and instead mimic the patterns on her vessel. For Robert, he says don’t do a literal cat, move it more fantasy.

We also don’t see any advice given to Yvonne or Melissa.

Guest Judge: Bill Corso. Mel freaks out that he’s there.

Mel: She had a large golden vessel with intricate colored patterns, and one image was some kind of antelope/gazelle creature. I think Mr. Westmore was right in his advice, try to replicate the designs rather than take one subtle image. Her result: okay, this is a pretty big mess. First up, the face is rough, poorly shaped, asymmetrical in a bad way, lumpy, poorly applied, and badly proportioned. The huge wide jaw is odd. Then add to that, the cowl, where she replicated the golden color of the filigree, but the patterns and shapes don’t necessarily match the bottle. I call this one a poor result all around, and the judges agree and give her Bottom Look.

Melissa: Her bottle is golden with cut through openings for texture. I give her credit for the original idea and for trying to replicate the colors and the holey appearance in her genie. However, the result doesn’t work at all. The dark blotches look less like hole texture and more like some splotchy affliction, which she even commented she wanted to avoid. Also, the costume is way too simplistic, looking like black pajamas or the outfits the models wear before they start getting made up. I suppose it is supposed to resemble harem pants, but it doesn’t. I get that she tried to enhance the colors in suble ways, but it just looks messy. Fortunately for her, she has immunity. This gets “Safe”, probably because the concept is original.

Walter: His vessel has dragons on it, so he wants to do something reptilian inspired. What he comes up with is very demonic looking, with scaling, but the colors are more orange. Despite the idea of demon and dragon being generic challenge elements, he finds a way to do a very original sculpt and paint job, giving a very sinister genie. I love this one, I think it is spectacular. Top Look.

Yvonne: Her vessel has a long spout and the handle is thin and arcs in a way to look like an ear, so this suggest elephant to her. I can see how that comes about, but I would have avoided an animal hybrid for reasons stated above. Her elephant has big ears, a small trunk, and tiny golden tusks. The colors are done in caucasian flesh tones, with gold tusks and hat. The hat really need more intricacy in patterns on it. But her texture and paint finish are great. Ultimately, it’s hard to see genie in it. Safe.

Rob: His bottle is green with blocky shapes. It has a kind of MezoAmerican feel, so he goes with that theme. The sculpt he comes up with for the face has the right balance of planes and angles with gentle curves, and the great handle ears. And even though he’s rushing to finish the paint and feels incomplete, the result works really well, and the torso paint almost looks intentional, giving more texture and subtle pattern to that area than a smooth paint job. This is a successful rendition of a very creative idea inspired from the look of the bottle. Nicely done. Top Look.

Robert: Red cat party genie. WTF? I hate the ears at the eye sockets. He added small hornlet things to fulfill Mr. Westmore’s suggestion to not do a literal cat - doesn’t help the result. Actually, the overall cat shapes of the face work pretty well, and as Glen says, they are some of his better work, but it’s completely amiss for this challenge. There is nothing in the result that ties to middle eastern imagery or costuming, and nothing that ties to a mystical creature that grants wishes. And the paint coloring is a little muddy, but not too bad. Anyway, Bottom look.

Top Looks: Walter and Rob. I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, Rob definitely has one of the most original ideas, and successfully connects his bottle to his genie. On the other hand, Walter’s looks just amazing even if it does take more common concepts of dragon and demon. Still, I give the win to Walter, and so do the judges.

Bottom Looks: Mel and Robert are both in the running. On quality of work, Mel has Robert beat out for bottom of the pile. However, Robert completely missed on all aspects of the challenge, and the judges don’t take kindly to his complete defiance of their caution from the previous week. Plus, if you want to take it into consideration, Robert has had 4 previous Bottom looks, whereas Mel has only had 1. Her overall consistency is a lot better, this was an off week for her. They dismiss Robert - yay!

No save this week. Maybe they will use it next week. There’s not much time left to use it.

This week marks Walter’s second non-Safe score, and it’s a Win. Good for him. However, I’m afraid he’s like certain contestants from prior seasons, who consistently do average but not disastrous or inspired works except for one or two instances right up their alley.

We will see if he can hold up, or get knocked out by Mel and Melissa and Yvonne. Rob is clearly in the lead.

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I guess I’m the only one who liked the holes in the model’s face and arms. I thought they were cool. And the fact that they were precise and regular kept them from looking splotchy or disease-like.

I agree with pretty much everything else y’all said, though. The elephant head was perfectly done and yet somehow boring. Mr. Westmore was correct to tell Mel to not pick one tiny little detail off the bottle but rather go for the overall image; unfortunately, she couldn’t do it.

I’m baffled as to how Melissa won the foundation challenge with a white forehead and a circle, especially when Walter’s fire-thingy was so gorgeous (yes, it would have looked better if he’d carried it through the rest of the face, but no, it didn’t look unfinished) and Yvonne’s lovely yellow-green face with feathers for hair was so cool.

There was nothing about Robert’s cat woman that said “genie.” Nor was there anything about Melissa’s or Rob’s or Yvonne’s that said “genie.” Nor Mel’s, although that one sucked in many other ways as well. Robert’s construction and application were perfect, but he got sent home for not doing something that none of the others did, either. Odd.

Also odd: After weeks of fervently wishing to be rid of Robert, I was sorry to see him go.

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This site does an in-depth overview: a giant glacier lies ahead

Short answer: the idea of genies in bottles and/or lamps has been kicking around for a long time, since ancient times, but it’s a pretty small part of the overall genie mythology. However, because it was known in the Western world, it ended up dominating the Western view of the Djinn, even though the Arabic world doesn’t see it as that major of a theme.

Interestingly, I thought, the site says that one feature that does come up over and over again is … furry legs, like an animal. So major points (in my book) to Rob for using this element. Did Rob already know that? Did he look it up? In some challenges (in past seasons), they’ve shown contestants doing online research on their tablets, but I’m not sure it’s allowed in all challenges because sometimes I’m frustrated when the contestants sit around saying “gee, I don’t know what this is, but I guess I’ll make it up” … surely they wouldn’t do that if they could research, right?

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I thought the concept was great. I thought the black fill didn’t work, and the shapes weren’t quite clean enough. Yes, equal spacing helps, but it still didn’t really read like the holes in the bottle.

The only thing I can think is the 3-D effect caught his eye.

I think we’re all stuck trying to define what makes something look like a genie, other than harem pants and a turban. It certainly would help for some idea of what the judges wanted. It feels like they were wanting something that looked powerful and demonic and maybe mischievous, but especially to have some observable link and inspiration from the bottle.

Rob’s definitely matched the bottle, definitely looked evil and powerful and demonic, very not human. It hit all those marks. Melissa’s was clearly inspired by her bottle, being golden with the hole patterns. It had some issues that didn’t quite read great, though. Yvonne’s elephant idea was a beautiful paint job and looked about as good an elephant/human hybrid as one can imagine, but it could have used more detailing in the hat. It did have a costume that at least felt middle eastern. But I think I’m right that the judges didn’t really want a straight animal human hybrid, it is not fantastical enough. Mel’s at least looked fantastical and exotic. However, it sucked in a lot of ways. Robert’s had no aesthetic that said genie, and didn’t really have any connection to the bottle, either, other than the color red. And when they lined up all six next to each other, Robert’s stood out as exceptionally off the mark for “genie”.

Plus, as I mentioned before, overall record likely played a strong role in their evaluations. In particular, Robert was specifically called out for letting his whimsy get in the way of the challenge, and this appeared to fit that same pattern. Ergo, he definitely deserved to be called out for it even more than any of the other contestants.

Thanks for that. Interesting read. It appears the theme of genies being bound to objects by sorcerers was an item that struck with western stories.

For Foundation Challenges, I don’t think they have time to do any research - 2 hours to complete the make up means grab your appliances and props and get to painting. For Spotlight challenges, I think they have access to tablets and can look things up. We’ve seen plenty of looking up references before, from images to replicate to back stories on myths. It is possible Rob looked that up and caught the part about furry legs. Or he just liked the primitive aspect to tie in with his concept.

However, I doubt anyone wants to spend time on extensive research. Unless there’s a wikipedia summary for story or an image search to get ideas for the aesthetic or details to emulate, they likely want to spend that time on sculpting, which ends up taking a lot of their creative time. Most of the “I’ll make it up” I feel like is connected with the Foundation challenges.

59

I think this is too generous. The party-cat-genie looks like a face mask - he has to cram ears onto the eyebrows because there’s not even a forehead to his design, let alone a cowl with room for ears. Likewise with horns - they have to be crammed onto the chin and eyebrows, because he can’t be bothered to do so much as a forehead.

The face was fairly well sculpted in some ways. If we were going for “Winnie-the-Pooh’s new friend” being humorously stylized might earn you points, but it’s not remotely realistic, even less genie-like than everyone else, and not even a complete makeup in my book. He uses a giant wig to cover up everything the sculpt fails to do.

So while Mel has some bigger problems, she did at least attempt to make a genie, and she attempted a project with a much more ambitious scope of work.

The judges didn’t mention it in their judging at all, but I wonder if they weren’t influence by Mr. Westmore’s advice on the designs. Mel’s followed his recommendation while Robert paid lip service to it. In fact, it’s almost like he was mocking the recommendation for horns.

60

I don’t think that’s an accurate representation. He sculpted the ears independently - the white head stand has the ears disconnected and placed on the head forward and above the human ears - sort of like where cat ears would be. He also molds them separately. There’s no reason they have to be connected to the rest of the facepiece. You can see during the build phase, the placement appears to be a choice based upon the wig and it’s underlayer. He mounted them to the face forward of the wig, and opted to go low it appears because of his choice of hairstyle. Poor decision, but not because he had to connect them to the face. As for the horns, Mr. Westmore’s advice is to take the design away from a literal cat, and Robert suggests adding some horns. Nothing specific about where to place the horns, or conventional horns vs spikes on the face. And it’s not necessarily a bad idea to put in small horns rather than large conventional horns. Just this specific arrangement was weak.

Now it does feel like he did a lot less work than the others, and the wig covered a lot.

I’m not sure the judges are even aware what advice Mr. Westmore gives them. And I don’t think Robert is mocking Mr. Westmore’s advice. He doesn’t seem to understand Mr. Westmore’s point, but the tiny horns do break up the cat face slightly.