Anytime Neville talks about strong or weak concepts or bringing it all together.
Artist aware of their work, good or bad.
Helping each other?
Drama?
I got stuck on the drinking aspect. Anytime editing makes it look like A is leaving but doesn’t, finish whatever you are drinking. If the guest judge is nicer or meaner than the the regular judges.
I have played WoW, and currently am, but don’t consider myself hard core. I did like having a challenge where I knew what they were trying to do.
I thought the guest judge was tough. Like first and second season judges tough. It was refreshing in some ways.
Again, Rob pulls something out and does very well even though he’s not feeling it during the actual build. Definitely going to be in the finale, imo. In this case, I don’t think it read Tauren due to the small profile but the sculpt and paint were top notch.
I was bummed about Yvonne. I think a good paint job could have saved her but even I could see it was muddy. And as others have said, what would have easily been safe earlier won’t cut it now.
Yes to Melissa. She was too excited and knew too much, so I think tried to do a bit too much for herself.
Walter surprised me. He didn’t seem to know WoW but his character was spot on. If this weeks is in his range, he could do well. Same for the finale.
Good summary as always, Irishman! Thanks!
Two comments: first, each week is graded on a curve for that week. With the exception of exceptional work, your ranking is determined by how everyone else does as well. Some things suck but get a pass because others suck worse. Somethings aren’t bad but are the worst that week.
That is effected by point 2: as the competitor pool narrows, there’s less room for “Safe”, and there are fewer complete fuck ups. Notice how Walter’s work was safe up until 3 weeks ago. His two Wins since are certainly out of character for the rest of his performance, but look at his Bottom look last week (cyclops). The sculpt had problems with the concept of the eye wrinkles, and he had some color issues, as well as decision to try to body paint on a focus challenge. But it wasn’t a complete disaster, just one of the worst out of 5.
I’m waiting for them to do a webcomic episode.
See Zig-Zag and Gene Catlow come to life!
You’re right that fabrication would have been a better result, but the real issue is that he needed to think more than back of the head and I think that’s what threw him. To capture the right look, he would have to raise the shoulders up substantially from a human norm. It’s not just building up the neck like he was trying; it’s raising shoulders and arms up as well. I’m not even sure that’s possible without CGI or puppetry, but it certainly wasn’t going to happen in three days. (Well… maybe no. I remember a two-headed giant in previous seasons, but I don’t think that approach would have worked here.)
So ultimately, I think it shows his talent to choose to scrap it. He knowingly missed the mark in terms of capturing source material, but other contestants would have put out a mutant hunchback that would have failed on every level. He had a man-cow, not a Tauren, but the judges agreed it was a very solid man-cow.
Yes, he needed to shape the back of the head a bit, but the crux of the outfit was building up the shoulders. Thus, building it into the costume. I think he could have enlarged the shoulders a bit while still using the arms and not looking too bad. It’s done a fair amount in movies.
But you are correct, he got stuck using the back of the head, and finally had to just quit because he didn’t have the time to figure it out.
I was surprised by last night’s results. Rob, Melissa, and Walter made it to the finale, Mel was sent home.
Of the four characters on stage last night, I thought Rob’s was the weakest, by a considerable margin. It wasn’t absolutely terrible, but compared to the others, I felt it was clearly the bottom look. This seemed in keeping with what the judges were saying about each one. He had a great sculpt, as expected, but the paint job was very rushed and didn’t really highlight what was so good about his design, and the look was very unfinished – the model’s chest and shoulders were bare, and the transition from the face was rough.
It’s in keeping with the show that if there are two make-ups that are about the same level, and one of them has to go, the judges seem to take into account the overall track record of the contestant. But this, I felt, was really a departure. I think Rob stayed in because of his past performance, even though what was actually on stage was significantly less successful than Mel’s. I admit I was disappointed. I’ve liked Rob all season, this was not typical for him, but still, his final product was substandard. I don’t think this was a case of two make-ups that were in the same ballpark. It’s always been part of the show that you can be consistently good, but if you tank with a particular challenge, that’s the breaks.
Last night’s results highlight what I hate about the show’s special immunity. It’s nonsense. Rob got special immunity last night. He deserved immunity based on his prior work, but if they’re going to play up a “one time immunity” like it’s different from what the judges do every single night, then they had an obligation to send Rob home in the last episode. There were good elements, but it was one of the least finished costumes ever on that stage.
But the judges confused me further. They loved Walter’s bat-guy, and yet that costume looked to me like layer upon layer of burlap. I look at the head of that creature and see a person wearing a painted burlap sack over their head. It must have been so much better in person than it was on TV. It just looked terrible to me. Armchair judging from home, I think Walter should have been eliminated.
I thought the whole challenge was a little bizarre, in fact. I didn’t see the most recent reboot, so maybe I’m missing something, but I thought the whole point of the King Kong mythos was that the animals on Skull Island didn’t really evolve into anything. They’re more throwbacks than anything else (whoa – now that would be a good challenge, to de-volve something, like Heck cattle). It’s like the challenge was only there to shoehorn in a promo for Universal Studios. So I pretty much thought Glenn was high when he was saying that Walter’s “really captured the King Kong” thing.
This was my take as well. I think Rob should have been eliminated because that’s what happens. This really was a special immunity because his piece wasn’t even done! I was shocked and really wanted to know about the judge’s thoughts on this.
If I was Mel, I would be mad! I can’t think of any other time an unfinished work, this late, was allowed to stay.
Agreed. The origin of the “Special Immunity” was Project Runway, where Tim Gunn had the one-time ability to overrule the judges. In “Face Off”, Michael Westmore would have that power. It was defined as Tim Gunn thinking the judges were wrong in their decision. To let the judges have that power is silly. They’re not saying that they were wrong, they’re saying they don’t want to eliminate X based on X’s past performances and expected future performances. The judges can grant “special immunity” anytime they want, including not eliminating anyone on a given week. It’s nonsense. Much though I like Rob, and think he’s definitely one of the best, he blew it this week and should have gone. (Although, the judges did say the work on the face was outstanding even if he didn’t finish.)
P.S. - One thing I wish they’d talk about more is the costuming and accessories. those are often amazing! The contestants surely don’t design and sew the costumes? I’d love to know how that works.
I have to join the choir here. Mel had a finished product, and while the face was a bit flat and lacking in interest (I thought), there’s no question that Rob’s character was only 90% of the way there. It was a fantastic sculpt, but you have to consider that the end game of Face Off is to get something on the set ready to film under a deadline. If Rob doesn’t have the time management skills, he shouldn’t make the cut. Could a talented director have filmed his character to hid the flaws? Maybe. But it’s clear the judges were going by past results and possibly who they felt would produce the most spectacular results in the finale. Seems unfair to Mel. At least the judges could have justified it by tsk’ing at the duct tape or something like that.
I wish they would show more of this too! They have some sort of costume shop where the contestants order the various elements of the costumes, because occasionally you will hear one of them talking about “when I robe I ordered arrived, it didn’t cover the entire arm so I had to improvise with some quick body paint.” I suspect the show edits out a lot of the costuming parts as to not take away from the central premise of the special make-ups and fabrications, but I think it would be interesting to see more of the decision-making process the contestants are going through as they design the overall look of the character, and I’m curious as to how much choice they have in the details of the costumes.
Sorry it’s late. Real life sucks. 
The Challenge: inspired by the new theme park adventure “Skull Island: Reign of Kong”, they are to take one of the imaginary creatures from the adventure and project how it might evolve into an intelligent species.
The winner wins a trip to Universal Studios to visit the Skull Island adventure when it opens.
It’s kind of a goofy challenge, in that they are ultimately making a bipedal humanoid form with some characteristics from their source creature. There’s nothing specific to drive, for instance, an insectoid with many legs to a 4 limbed upright form. Or for a batlike creature to evolve separate wings independent from the arms. I suppose one can argue that over time, bipeds evolved from fish, so anything is possible, but I really hate that conceit.
Mel, Decarnocimex: She got a shelled insectoid like a big trilobyte. Her first concept showed a similar face and a shell on the head to fit the profile of the picture, but the shell didn’t extend down onto the back. I thought that looked pretty stupid. Then she had problems sculpting and coming up with something she liked, so she stared over and rethought the arrangement. I hate it. I really hate it. The shapes are bad, I don’t like the platelike arrangement of the face, the colors look muddy and dreadful. The shell she coated with spackle or something to make it rough, but insect shells tend to be smooth or ridged, not bumpy.
What really bugs me is in her description, she says that the cowl and back are what they are evolved from, “they’ve taken that and fashioned that into armor”. Um, what? Do they shed the shells, and then wear them? How does that work? However, the judges don’t agree with my assessment, and say some complimentary things about the result. Though Ve does say the distance read is muddy. And one thing she does have is a completed character.
Walter, Terapusmordax: He gets a batlike creature with arms for wings and long legs for grabbing. He wants his creature to have separate arms for fighting from the wings, which I don’t think is a good choice, especially since so few wings on this show turn out acceptable. I like the face. I think it has creative folds for the eyes and great ears, and the bunchy skin around the neck works for me. He chose good colors based upon the inspiration image, and his paint job is good. The biggest problem is the wings. He has an idea to make wings that will fold and open up under trigger, so he can give them motion, but his first fab attempt fails and he’s left dumping that concept on time concerns. But he still uses the lame foam tube over PVC armature. That looks pretty tacky. He does good with the wing membrane itself, using latex paint on the floor to make them, but his wing placement doesn’t work. He has them up and sort of partially stread wide to the front. I suppose they could spread directly out instead of folding and rotating back, but the specific position partially deployed just doesn’t work. Still, it is a decent effort.
Melissa, Arachno-claw (Arachnocidis): Hers is also insectoid, and her result is clearly the best of the night. Her sculpt is detailed and intricate, and the mouth parts move very complexly. The face works with the shell for the back, and the colors are bright. And she manages do to hands as feet as well as the chest piece. My one complaint is maybe it’s too bright, with too many colors. Maybe not do the blue dots against all the purples and yellows. And Glen points out the antenna position probably should be more upright than sagging down. Still, great work. And she manages to do a lot on application day, still fabricating pieces and doing all the painting.
Rob, Vashtatosaurus Rex: As the name implies, he starts with a tyrannosaur type dinosaur. Once again, he cranks out an immensely detailed scale structure for both the face and the back piece. He cheats and uses a flat mold for the cowl that he folds on the model’s head, but it works. Maybe there’s something disproportionate in the face, with the jaw bigger and wider and the head narrower, but I think it’s interesting because it doesn’t conform to human form in that way.
However, his big problem is time management. For some reason it takes him a long time to do the application of all his pieces (face, head, back, neck, hands?), so he hurts himself on time for painting. Also, there is a costume design issue. He wants a scaly back and neck, but his costume is something of a leather toga, and that leaves large patches of the shin on the arms, shoulders, chest, and back exposed. That’s a horrible decision, because much of the character is scaled, but then to have these large smooth sections isn’t likely to work. He tries to add hemp fiber to cover up the arms, but doesn’t have enough time to get finished, so his result is very incomplete. I think the paint on the face is pretty good, although it doesn’t pop. The paint on the rest of the sculpted pieces seems good, but he really has a mess on the skin. He manages to have a layer of paint on the exposed skin, so everything is at least treated, but it’s not complete, and doesn’t blend well at the edges of the sculpts. Ultimately, I think he should have thought his costume out more to actually cover more skin rather than have to paint all that.
The Win goes to: Melissa, and rightly so. She gets the prize package.
Second person in is: Walter. He did a pretty good job, and Glen remarked that he has vision, the ability to define what he wants.
On the final two, I really hated Mel’s, so I think Rob’s overall result is better even though he didn’t get completed and has a major flaw in the costuming/skin paint. They seem to think Mel’s wasn’t that bad. It appears they mostly gave it to Rob on the respective records. Mel has a very dynamic record, with some good results and some bottom looks, including the judges’ save. Whereas Rob has a very consistent record of great results, with only struggles the last two weeks. Last week was a mess trying to figure out how to do the hump, and this week was largely time management/costuming. I think they decided that given his past skill, it had to be a time issue rather than a lack of ability or understanding that it wasn’t complete.
So, I can see why this result is controversial, but it is the call I would have made. If you weigh the amount of ability of the two, Rob has so much more going for him, it would be a shame to send him home over what ends up being a time issue over any flaws in work. Whereas Mel had some real clunkers. Total up all Robs Top Looks. Total up all Mel’s. Total up all Rob’s Bottom looks (0), versus Mel’s (3), and that she got the Save. To me, going by one night would be unfair, going by their proven ability is much more fair.
Looking at it now, I get what you’re saying about the burlap sack thing. Between the bagginess and the color scheme, I can see it. I like it better than you did. To me it reads like the skin is baggy.
I think what he meant is that he captured the essence of his inspiration character the best. You can look at the picture and see the direct correlation, whereas both Mel and Melissa have more of an “inspired by” feel. Rob’s is closer to being a direct descent.
Oh, one thing I meant to say, I was thinking it might have been cool if Rob had attempted to make his models arms shorter. But perhaps that was too much to go for. Clearly he’s much better at sculpting and painting than the costume side. Fabrication may not be his thing.
The first couple of seasons, the contestants were making all the costumes and props. At some point, the show decided to take some work off their shoulders to allow them to spend their time on the make up portion. So, for example, they only have to clean the molds, and some other team runs them overnight. Unless the costume element is a specific fabrication, they outsource that part.
It’s hard to tell how they specify what they want. We’re shown sketches of the concept including costume and all, but the sketches we are shown appear to be all from one artist, which suggests they are created after the fact. That also isn’t how it worked the first several seasons, were they would show us the contestant’s art books.
And I agree with everyone on the special judges’ immunity - it really doesn’t make sense. “You have to eliminate someone every week, except one week of your choosing.” Except they ultimately decide every week who to eliminate out of the Bottom looks, as they assign them. Usually they have 3 or 4 choices to work from. It only really becomes tight when they’re down to the last 5 or so contestants, and by thin, someone is going to be disappointed.
oops. Take 2.
Finale Part 1: They take the idea from last season, the short film, and give a slightly different take. Make a short horror film, where a single story concept is envisioned by three different directors.
Producer Jason Blum (Insidious, Paranomal Activity) is guest judge as well as project source.
The contestants pick their teams.
Rob picks Kaleb and Anna. Kaleb? Okay, he had some good results, one of which was working with Rob. Anna had early successes in teams.
Melissa picks Yvonne and Johnny. Johnny worked with her on the lollipop man, though didn’t do well on the alien bounty hunter or the language challenge.
Walter picks Mel and Robert. Mel’s got some talent, Robert is the questionable call. He seemed to last longer than his talent suggested.
They get scripts and 3 days to prepare 2 characters for a lighting and camera test, like last time. Immediately I expect that next week they will get a surprise third character, like last time.
Walter gets Ryan Spindell, whose version of the story involves a harvest demon who rises from the earth and entangles a female in vines. I liked the storyboard concept art, but they don’t do anything like that. His concept is an organic, half tree, half pumpkin demon with everything lopsided and trying to break up as much as possible the human form of the face. The vines are going to be passing in and out of the woman’s skin.
Rob gets Bryce McGuire, and his version of the script has a couple moving to a farm they want to build an oil well, but when they dig into the ground they release a horned demon. The director describes being in dry cracked earth, with a white dry crushed texture. Kaleb asks how much he should look like a goat. “I feel like I would like to see something new.” Dry, cracked, sun-baked. The wife will be possessed with a classic look, maybe with oil on her from the oil well.
Melissa gets John Wynn, and his version involves a creepy cyclops doll that gets burned and releases the demon. He gives a strange physical description: “the ghastly body of the chupacabra mashed with face of the hatchet fish and teeth of the goliath tiger fish.” Erm, what? He wants the demon to be a cyclops, and the possessed male to turn into the new “Mr. Sticks” doll. To some extent, she’s just done a cyclops so needs to do something different with it. However, her previous cyclops was nonconventional in being lizardy.
Mr. Westmore brings in Lois Burwell to help with the mentoring round. They’re very much in sych with their comments.
Screen test results:
Melissa’s team goes first. Her demon has a pretty strong concept. The single eye is ripped out, so it’s more of a wound than an eye. She needs to make it more red in that region, which is something the screen test pulls out. The big issue with this makeup is she does some weird symbol stuff on the chest which she doesn’t really like and John Wynn doesn’t like, either, but particularly having oil ooze out of looks like lactation. So she needs to move the pores higher on the chest, not on the pecs. The possessed victim shows that the positions for the action hide some of the work on the chest, and he wants that higher so it’s more easily seen, and some treatment for the hands like they are turning into sticks. Still, her changes aren’t huge and they are the kind of things the screen test would pick up that you might not get in the shop, plus specifics that the director wants to add. She’s in pretty good shape overall.
Walter’s team goes second. The demon overall is pretty good, except for the vines wrapped around him that are incomplete so they are just foam tubes. Robert actually proves useful in applying moss and lichen all over to hide edges and otherwise enhance the look. There are some very minor catches by Mr. Westmore about bright spots on the eyebrow and nose. The demon face is asymmetrical with lots of lumps and bumps, but comes off pretty scary. The director is pretty happy. The possession makeup, he wants less changes up around the left forehead area. Scale it back a little. He has very few changes, though some additional work on the vines and obviously rebuilding what they did today.
Rob… WTF? I liked where Rob was going with his original concept for the demon, but then he decided to start over and came up with something new. He wanted it to be kinda mole-like how it burrows through the dirt, then gave it a rhino type horn and spiral horns on the head. The face of the demon is mind-boggling. Where the hell did this Rob come from? He went all season with strong work, and then crumbles for the finale? You can see the director isn’t thrilled. He starts giving lots of notes on things to change. Make the eyes pop out better. Break up the horns to start more randomly. Make the hands more shovellike. Make the color more white. Change the nose. Embed natural elements from the location. Make the ear hole more of a hole (less like ears?). Then for the possessed woman, I think it looks good, but the director thinks it is way too extreme. He wants it dialed way back. Basically, Rob and his team have to resculpt both characters essentially from scratch. Well, at least they had the screen test to tell them what the director wants. But damn, he’s in a deep hole compared to the other two, and that’s before they get a surprise third character as I assume is going to happen.
I think both Melissa and Walter are in good position, with some changes but not a huge amount of rework. But Rob is basically starting over. Guess we will see what happens next week.
It seems like purposeful editing to make Rob look like he’s gonna lose, but then he’ll pull it together, re-fabricate a bunch of stuff, and manage the win. Rob always acts like the sky is falling but (usually) turns things around at the last minute. I think that’s where the season’s been going all along? I may be too cynical about reality TV in general, though 
Rob’s looked like ass to me. Editing can’t account for that.