Face Off Season 11

Cafe Society
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Things just got shook up once again.

Step 1: for this challenge, we are merging the 4 teams of 2 into 2 teams of 4. Mackenzie let’s the teams pick their partners, so they mix - Ben & Evan run over to Cig & George, which leaves Emily & Tyler with Adam & Logan. Nobody seems unhappy. I think that’s probably the ideal pairing for competition’s sake, to mix the two stronger teams with the weaker teams. Also, the strongest and weakest team were combined, and the two middle teams were combined.

Step 2: Announce the challenge for the week - to make a sadistic family of creepy backwoods freaks for a horror movie. They get three models to make three makeups, based upon one of two preset locations. They pick from two maps. Adam is a dick. They get an abandoned military base, while the other team gets a circus. Circus Freaks! This is a 2 day challenge.

Step 3: Rules Change! From now on, there will be no more immunity weeks, and they will eliminate individuals, not teams, one competitor a week.

Guest judge: director Marcus Nispel

Emily & Tyler and Adam & Logan: “Let’s go with the most stupid and trite and hackneyed idea we can think of.”“Yeah, let’s do that.” They decide their family witnessed a nuclear explosion (:eek:), and the father will have half his body marred by the blast. Erm. Then they propose a cute little girl who lures the victims in, and then a crazy lady mother who is really messed up, but still puts on her makeup and fixes her hair like nothing is amiss.

The team suggest using some appliance to pull the lip back - Tyler says he’s done it, then he says he’s always wanted to do it, so I’m a bit confused. So if Tyler and Logan are so excited by doing that, why is it Emily that they set off on that task? She can’t get it to work, so they just opt to sculpt it into the facial appliance instead. Adam recognizes that the concept is bland and obvious, not creative, but nobody can get a different idea. Finally he suggests on day two that they swap the tallest and smallest models, and they make the daughter really big, which will make the father a bit small. The difficulty is they come up with that idea after they made their appliances sized to the other models. Putting the father’s face on the girl means Adam has to mask her large lump of hair, so he scrounges up a bunch of appliances to cover her head.

First looks on reveal stage: yah! Definitely a scary mess. The dad makeup is troubling. There doesn’t seem to be a coherent idea represented for what is wrong with him. There are a lot of random lumps but it isn’t clear what they are, the color has a lot of green in it for some reason, and then the back of the head has a completely different effect of the skin shredding. It’s undefinable as a visual concept. The mom, meanwhile, is horrifying. Now that’s a creepy looking face. She’s got pustules and lumps and rotted teeth all covered over with pancake make up. And the eyes… That really nailed that character. The human flesh casserole is visually too confusing to me.

Then we get the daughter, who is huge and then has those tiny asymmetric pigtails, the scarring on her face, all the boils and burns on her arms. It definitely shakes up the expected, moving away from quite so trite.

During explanation, Tyler mentions they all worked on all the characters “to keep them as cohesive as possible,” but they actually aren’t very cohesive. The judges ding them for not having a consistent look to what is wrong with them even though it’s from the same source.
Ben & Evan and Cig & George: They decide on a hydrocephalic (water head) boy in a wheelchair, the mom and dad dress him up like the ringleader and they force their victims to perform for them before they eat them. Yum. They make the mom a former strong-woman but she’s old now, and the dad is a “humanzee” (human-chimpanzee looking hybrid) who is an organ grinder (because monkeys performed for the organ grinder). That’s a bit more creative than the other team. For extra creativity, they want the “humanzee” to also be a “pinhead”. I had to go look that up, because their sketch and mold weren’t making sense to me. “Pinheads” were what they called microcephalics, people who have underdeveloped heads that the brain never grew, so the skull is abnormally low. Now it is a fact that pinheads were often called monkey people or “the missing link” because of the low brow, big jaw look. But there’s a striking problem with this concept - a pinhead is by definition a small head, with the skull low and underdeveloped. But they can’t take off the model’s head, so their craft would have to find some creative workaround. Except they sculpt this big tall point sticking up off the top of the guys’ head, so his head is actually twice as tall as normal. I don’t get it.

So mom was a fire eater who got burned, then a sword swallower who poked the sword out her throat. Thus the mix of elements to mess her up, coupled with age and sagging skin where her muscles used to be. They want arm flaps made from silicone - I’m wondering how they’re going to pull that off. (Hint - poorly.)

My first impression on the reveal stage: this is a bit of a mess. Especially the mom. The wig is an absolute miss, looking horribly fake. The arm gag doesn’t work for me, because the flaps stick out at odd angles and only look right with her arms in one position, but change her arm position and the flaps don’t look right, they’re just sticking out at weird angles. I will say the face came out great - the shapes and application and paint on the face look incredibly real. However, there is a bad blend line for the appliance to her chest, and the skin on her shoulders that hasn’t been addressed to make it look old. Unfortunately, her legs seem to be suffering from lipoedema, which, if you image search (and I don’t recommend it), you will see they actually kinda look like that.

For the hydrocephalic boy, that is one creepy look. I think the overall result is good, the veining is great, I just am not sure about the greenish color. But otherwise, that’s a hit. Then there’s the monkey dad. I think the face sculpt and paint work out pretty good - his features look like distorted human features. But I still hate the pinhead element. Fortunately, they don’t seem to play that up in the explanation. I do love that the organ he is supposed to grind is actually a meat grinder. I think they hit 2 out of 3.

This is a tough call for me. I think the circus is a more cohesive set. I think the flaws with the nuclear dad are worse than the flaws with the strongwoman. Her face sculpt in particular is awesome, it’s just some of the other details that I don’t like.

So the judges award the win as a team to Cig & George and Ben & Evan.

That leaves the other team for elimination. What’s frustrating to me here is that it was Adam’s idea to swap the models that made their concept more exciting, and garnered so much praise for the girl character. But he’s the one who sculpted, applied, and painted the dad, and that was a mess all around, so ultimately his work was the worst on the team. Bye bye, Adam.

So now are they competing as individuals rather than teams? Because they’re being eliminated as individuals0. Or do they keep the superteams for another week? I guess we will find out next week.

So with that twist, time to rate the competitors.

George: 4 Wins, 1 Top, 4 Safes, 0 Bottoms
Cig: 4 Wins, 1 Top, 4 Safes, 0 Bottoms
Emily: 3 Wins, 3 Tops, 2 Safes, 1 Bottom
Tyler: 3 Wins, 3 Tops, 2 Safes, 1 Bottom
Ben: 1 Win, 3 Tops, 2 Safes, 3 Bottoms
Evan: 1 Win, 3 Tops, 2 Safes, 3 Bottoms
Logan: 0 Win, 2 Tops, 2 Safes, 5 Bottoms

Observation 1: George & Cig and Emily & Tyler and Ben & Evan match on records because they are on teams. Duh.

Observation 2: Emily and Tyler only have 1 Bottom look, that was this week where they were paired with another team. These two teams were fairly even.

Observation 3: This win this week keep George and Cig closer to Emily and Tyler. C&G have 5 High but 0 Low, whereas E&T have 6 High but 1 Low. 6 - 1 = 5, right?

Observation 4: Logan is set to be the next to go home, unless he has a stellar week or someone has a major flub.

We need more individual results to separate the contenders, but I feel Emily is a stronger competitor alone than Tyler.

Mackenzie’s outfit: a brown sweater dress with sparklies in it. I like this better than the last couple of weeks.

Oh, and for those of you who wish there was more discussion of the fabrication techniques used, you really need to check out the new SyFy series “Cosplay Melee”. I will be doing a separate thread on that show, but the set up is structurally different. They take 4 cosplayers each week and they have that one episode as a challenge to win $10,000. They did much more is description of the fabrication techniques, like how one woman used warbla to sandwich over her foam to give it a smoother texture, or another woman applied bondo (car repair) to her foam to give it a smooth finish so when she painted it, it really looked like metal. I’m thinking about previous episodes here where we thought the foam still looked like foam and not rock or ice? Here’s a couple techniques they could have used.

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Irishman, thanks for the summary!

In general, we seem to agree. Interesting that we are going to individuals but that made sense or one more team is out before the finale. This will give them another five shows this season.

I wasn’t happy with the pairing but it probably did make for the best drama. Adam’s negativity has been wearing on me this season for some reason. Thing is, I get it. I can be outwardly negative even as I’m thinking about how to fix something or make something work. I really didn’t like him being a jerk and picking the other thing. I would have loved to have seen their clowns.

As for the makeups, bland and uninspiring to me as well. Adam’s idea to swap the girl and the dad was nice but that hurt the execution obviously. Again, as Irishman said, nothing that stood out.

I am curious now that we don’t have teams, who between Emily and Tyler really stand out.

We did watch Melee Cosplay and not knowing anything about it, the format threw us. We were expecting to get to know them better. I will look for a thread on that!

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I’m a little bit skeptical about the change in rules for elimination, because in practical terms, it means that the teams with fewer wins (Ben and Evan and Adam and Logan) are effectively screwed. Unless, for example, Emily or Tyler effectively takes the day off and spends their time finger painting graffiti on the models, it’s going to be difficult for them to take a dive so badly that the judges would vote them off. So, if you’re not on the winning team, you had a 50% chance of elimination this week.

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My big question for the week was “Where/when did the Cig/Evan/Ben/George team have time to make the t-shirts with their faces on them?”

I didn’t like the challenge as much this week. Three models for 4 people tends to mean that at least 1 person can’t really show off as much (you tend to end up with 3 1-on-1 matches with the 4th person “helping” or 2 1-on-1 and the other two people splitting the final model) so it places someone at a disadvantage.

I also didn’t really like the results that much, either - but then, this is a genre that I don’t really watch/like so I’m possibly not the best judge.

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Cig and George have had theirs since the beginning of the season. Don’t know about the other two.

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Spoilers ahead, of course.

Last night’s challenge was for each team to model three members of a coven who have been cursed by an opposing coven. They were told the components used to cast the curse and told to use that to inspire their creations.

Teams were Tyler, Logan and Emily vs Ben, Evan, Cig and George.

Team 1 (Tyler, etc…) went with a tree motif – their coven members were being suffocated by willows. Team 2 originally went with a rat/snake motif but wisely switched to a “diseased rat clan” motif after wasting a day puttering around in the lab.

Despite the second team having, effectively, only two days to work on their design, they really knocked it out of the park. Their characters looked really ratty and diseased while still capturing “witchy”. I personally was not as impressed with Team 1’s results – we’ve seen more effective tree make ups in the past. The coven looked good, but I thought Team 2 came up with a more cohesive and coherent looking set – like something out of a very dark Ratatouille.

And…this brings up the flaw in the current team setup. On Team 1, Emily clearly had the most difficulty coming up with a character design. Her end result looked, to me, more like a blurry gargoyle than a witch. On Team 2, Evan’s rat creature was the least finished, but it was pretty darned good and fit nicely in with the rest of the coven. If the judging were blind, I think Team 2 would have won and Emily would have been sent home. But Emily has a ton of wins and the judges love her. So the fix was in; Team 1 was declared the victor by a hair and Evan was sent home.

Now it’s clear that Evan’s witch was not complete; the first day of dithering cost the team dearly. But Emily’s witch was, by far, the least impressive thing she’s put out. So I think Emily squeaked by on a lifetime achievement award.

Of note: Cig’s rat creature was really well done with incredibly detailed hands including rat pads.

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I don’t think I like the “superteam” concept.
For both groups, I think they got the “cursed” part of the challenge, but I didn’t see “witch” in their makeup. I’m not quite sure how to display that (one of the myriad reasons I’m not on the show), but I don’t think they hit it either.

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This was an episode full of mixed emotions for me.

I thought the challenge was interesting, although I didn’t have any clear idea that came to me right away about how it could best be executed … and I don’t think the contestants did either.

Tyler, Logan and Emily stressed me out right away, when they said that since they had three people, each one would work on one character. HOW MANY TIMES have the judges criticized a team effort for having separate characters that didn’t really go together? That said, I ultimately liked all three designs, and while they didn’t look like a completely unified effort, the final results looked reasonably in the same universe, I guess. As the judges mentioned, Emily’s wasn’t terribly distinctive, but it still looked better than the majority of stuff on Face Off over the years. Tyler’s was great, and I find him to be a really nice guy, so it was great to see him so excited about his design, and the win.

Ben, Evan, Cig and George generally make me mental, but I am impressed that they got so much good work done especially after scraping the entire first day of work. I get that they look like rats. I agree with Mr. Westmore’s advice, and the judges mentioned it as well, that it was a good decision to focus on one element of the curse. But for my taste, I didn’t see enough hints of the other elements. Other than looking like a bunch of rat people, I wasn’t getting “witches” and I wasn’t particularly getting “cursed” (or at least, not that particular curse).

Based on this week alone, I could have understood either Emily or Ben leaving, although personally I preferred Emily’s, and thought the Emily/Tyler/Logan team looked witchier and cursier. Overall though, Emily has been much stronger than Ben, so I am 100% on board with the decision.

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I thought both of the teams this week overliteralized the curses they were given. Personally I’d have gone with sympathetic magic, rather than putting aspects of the ingredients in the makeup, but the judges liked them, so…

One from the Ben/Cig/George/Evan team going was pretty inevitable from the moment they started working…they obviously had no idea what they wanted, while the other three launched right into a strong idea. I was actually hoping it’d be Cig or George…I’ve had it out for them since the Monster High challenge. >_>

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I agree with what people have said here. To sum up:

Missing some cohesiveness even on the good team.
No idea what superteam means.
Emily has been consistent and improved since her last time on Face Off and while we have seen one slip up cost it for the person, the judges seem to be considering the season’s work, so that meant Ben.
Losing a day and getting that much work done is impressive.

I also agree with Kamino that they over-literalized the curses. Perhaps I read too much urban fantasy, but I would have liked more subtle things. Instead of the deformities, a person in a suit with a mark on them was what I wanted. This all seemed too much for me.

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Cursed Covens

Challenge announcement: lab is decorated with an alter, cauldron, trees, lightning and thunder, and Mackenzie.

I like her dress here. The colors and pattern are neat.

Each superteam is to create a supernatural coven of 3 witches or warlocks, however, each team has been cursed by the other team. They pick a spellbook with a list of ingredients, and then they have to instantly come up with a name for their curse.

Why immediately name it? Why not tell them they need a name as part of the reveal?

Of course, being nerds, Cig and George have to recite the magic incantation for The Book of the Dead… or something like it. :wink:

Ben & Adam & Cig & George: their spell list includes Essence of deadly Nightshade, the forked tongue of a black snake, dried nettles, and pickled rat tails. They come up with the name, “Shadow of the Spiteful Serpent”. Hmmm, I kinda like that one. Serpent is a good word for a spell.

Emily & Tyler & Logan: their spell list includes horn of goat, a bundle of sage, the sap from a poisoned willow tree, and the last breath of a dying man. Name: “The Goat Sage Curse”. No wait, “The Suffocating Sage of Willow”. Okay, so it lists the ingredients, but it doesn’t make sense. What is a “Sage of Willow”? And they left out goat. If you’re just going to list the ingredients, you can’t leave out the one you found most interesting, Logan.

Okay, time to design.

Ben & Evan & Cig & George: Cig immediately has a pretty good idea. Their coven hides in the darkness to cast magic, so the curse makes them suffer pain in the darkness. “This coven must remain within the light, for the shadows carry the serpent’s bite.” Nice little rhyme, too. That in itself seems like a fairly good structure for their curse, just need the details of what the curse actually does. So they come up with… “subterranean rat witches being taken over by a snake curse”, so they transform from rats into snakes. Okay, so what is a “rat witch”? It seems to me they’re trying to hard to bring in the elements of the spell and not thinking about what the challenge is - witches, not aliens or monsters or demons or animal-people. They have a warlock leader and two witch partners.

Emily & Tyler & Logan: They decide that since there are three people and three characters, and they need to have identifiable breakdown of work, they will each take a character. The potential problem with this approach is the lack of a cohesive look. This is supposes to be a coven - a set of witches. The spell should be in some way similar across the three. They opt to tie in the “last breath of a dying man” as their key element, but manifest the curse in different ways. Tyler wants his witch transforming into a willow tree, and the branches reaching down and suffocating her. Nice! Emily opts to incorporate that element through a bluish purply gray color palette. Hmm, less obvious, lets see if she can make it work. Logan takes the warlock and has the tree closing over his mouth. That’s a good concept, too. They are hoping to tie the characters together with color palette. Now I think the concept of the different manifestations of the spell could make sense if you explain it in some way, such as the manifestation occurs based upon the spells you cast or something. They still have the same elements, but the way the spell appears is different because of the interaction with the witches themselves. That would be a cool explanation. All have sap from the tree, and all have a bundle of sage to self-medicate.

Emily & Tyler & Logan all start sculpting madly. They each pursue their individual concepts and knock out body suits and cowls so they can get them molded for prepainting the next day. Day 2, they start sculpting the faces. Logan adds the goat horn element to the face, small but present. Emily struggles to find an original creative look. Her face has nothing unique or novel to set it apart. She does add small horn nubbins to tie to Logan’s, which gives it something, but it’s still fairly generic.

Ben & Evan & Cig & George all start sculpting, but they all have different ideas of what they are going for. They end up wasting the whole 6 hour day without achieving anything. At least they realize that their concept is flawed and not fitting the challenge. They come in day two with a modified concept: ignore the snake element, and instead make them witches that are becoming rats and diseased by the light. They’re all happier. (Side note: when George is explaining making a tail for the warlock, the graphics department shows the old snake version sketch, not the new rat version. Oops.)

Judging

Emily & Tyler & Logan: First glance, their robes are different. Not a deal breaker, but you would expect witches in a coven together to have something similar in style. Emily’s witch face, I have to say, looks really good. Her painting ability and eye for color make the face pop. I think the texture reads great, the horn nubbins are there, and the face does have an overall witchy look with the pointy nose and chin. I suppose there is nothing original or unique that jumps out, but it is certainly a great make up. The body transforming to wood also looks good. Tyler’s witch is great. It’s pretty much all willow tree, no other elements, but the texture and detail are great, and the look of the branches moving to strangle her are great. Maybe if a few were a bit longer and wrapping even more around the throat, but the concept is there and identifiable. And then the hands becoming branches, that’s a good accent. Logan’s warlock has a problem that, with the horns especially, it reads more as a demon face than a warlock. Still, the execution is great. The roots closing over the mouth and taking over the head in general is great. His chest is supposed to still be basically human form but starting to tree up, and I guess that looks pretty good. Then he built up the back to be very tree growth and rigged glowing mushrooms. That’s an awesome detail. The judges do point out that he almost has three separate concepts within this one character, but it still works for me. I suppose as a group one thing that stands out is the color scheme is a bit different for each make up, with Emily’s being more dark green and gray, Tyler’s being lighter and brighter, and Logan’s having more reds and browns. That doesn’t help bridge the cohesiveness any. Still, I think all three are remarkable and spectacular, with only a bit of a lack of cohesiveness. They tried to address that by saying they were from different covens and banded together to fight the others. I guess that is an explanation, but I think mine works better.

Ben & Evan & Cig & George: First impression, these look like a set. The color palette is the same, the clothing is similar is style and color scheme, and the manifestation of the curse appears to be the same, with all three having rat features and sores and such from the light and from scratching themselves. The opt to put a ring mark on the forehead to represent the snake, so at least they tried to incorporate that element in some manner and didn’t just ignore it. And this look does work for their curse name, “the Shadow of the Spiteful Serpent”, because the shadow element for the sores, and transforming into a rat would be setting them up as snake prey. Cig’s witch is awesome, with great rat face shaping including the lip area going away, the ears taking on a pointed aspect, and then there’s the creepy hands that look spectacular. George and Evan’s warlock face has some similar shapes with the nose and chin and lips, and then the ears even more upward on the head. And those hands turned out great as well. That leaves Ben’s witch. While the general impression reads similar to the other two, the face isn’t pock-marked like the other two, and the sores manifest a bit differently. Also, the lips and nose don’t quite show the same transformation. Now one thing that didn’t get mentioned was the original concept had the three at different stages, with this witch the least transformed, and maybe if that were made explicit it would help explain his a bit more. Also, he had to cover the hands on his model, because he couldn’t get the paint job done, so that’s a detail lacking that the others have.

The quality this week is stellar all around. It says something that one of the bottom looks is Emily’s, which is a season winner on other seasons. The teams really pulled off pretty even results. They basically used Emily’s record as the tie-breaker, since the two “bottom” performers this week were Emily and Ben. There’s no way Emily should go home over that make up. Fortunately, they had something else to point at.

Top looks: Tyler, Emily, & Logan

Eliminated: Ben.

And that leaves the teams even again.

Mackenzie’s dress: black with silver sparkly spots like stars. Neat.

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Yeah, for some reason they decided to change the format and it doesn’t seem fair. Half way through, your record is now dependent upon someone new. The way they are handling the wins and losses by superteam means you can have one of the bottom makeups in the Top look group and have one of the best make ups in the Bottom group. That seems off to me. It made more sense when teams of two were eliminated as a whole, though it would lead to a different way to end the season. I guess they still wanted some team element to the challenge rather than reverting to standard form of competing as individuals, but I don’t think I like the result.

I spotted those as well. Whereas the other team all wore purple.

This time the split the work by having the middle character have a back piece as well, so there was the cowl and all the hands from one and the face and back from the other. That gives everyone a significant role.

I agree, but I’m of the opposite opinion about the results, in that I think their past performance should play a role in evaluating them. Not that I think Ben would have made it to the finale with Tyler, Cig, and George all still producing high grade work. Still, the possibility would remain that Ben could make it to the finale, and that just wouldn’t make sense to have him in and Emily out.

The show is about making special effect character make ups. Doing too little can get you eliminated just as easily as doing too much. Too much and you don’t get done, too little and you didn’t work hard enough. I think they both approached the challenge adequately, within the framework of how challenges are typically given. “Use these elements to inspire your make up.”

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I didn’t say anything about subtle or minimalist, I said a non-literal ‘sympathetic magic’ take.

Take the goat/willow/sage/last breath one.

Take something associated with each, and build a makeup around that…

Goats are known to be indiscriminate about eating - so, the cursed victim grows fat, gets injuries around their mouth from trying to eat inedible objects, and rashes/discolouring due to poisoning.
Willow and sage both have analgesic qualities, so the cursed victim loses their ability to feel pain. More injuries.
For the last breath, I’ll actually go more literal than they did, because theirs were about the least literal version you could demonstrate in a makeup, and what they did works against the rest of the concept I’m running with - blue from hypoxia.

Plenty of stuff to show off in sculpting, painting and costuming, but nothing involved enough to threaten to send them overtime, unless something goes awry.

Cig seemed to be making a suggestion in a non-literal direction at first, but that was dropped pretty quick.

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I was thinking something similar - all of those are associated with long life and old age - so a curse that aged parts of them too quickly, maybe?

Or for the nightshade team, mixing that together would get something that bites and stings on the outside while you’re being eaten alive from the inside.

Not subtle, but not a cross between a rat and a snake.

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Keeping up is a bitch. I’m juggling TV and computer time with others, and have a lot going on.

First, another Rules Change! Now they are competing individually. Good, no more superteams.

Challenge: Make an alien for an intergalactic political delegation. Each contestant is assigned a dossier with traits for their alien.

Logan, Ascencian Clerica: Wait, the aliens name is “High Priest”? Talk about hoaky. Because this alien comes from a theocracy, he wants to incorporate a priest’s hat shape to the head. Maybe too literal? The planet has volatile gases, so he wants an underground dwelling reptile. Okay. Then he rethinks the head shape and gets more creative with some ridges. Good call. Some application issues with the hands, but he gets them resolved. For the reveal, I think it looks pretty good. The judges like the sculpt, but think the colors are too muddy. Safe.

Emily, Renar Embargas: She eschews the obvious alien princess thing and goes for a male alien. Good for her. I’m not thrilled with the sketch for the head shape. It looks like a helmet embedded under the skin or something. For the reveal, I’m not impressed. The color scheme isn’t bad, and she’s done a lot of detail in the veining, but the forms are off for me. First off, the basic shape is a combination of too bland with too inexplicably weird. And then she put some horn things on the forehead that don’t look organic or like they match. But the judges seem to love it all, from the turquoise to the head shape to the bones on the forehead. Glen thinks this is the most successful at looking like a delegate on Star Trek. Neville comments that the sculpture wasn’t pushed far enough, but the paint job renders in more detail that really help the look. Ve loves the color, and she likes the bones on the forehead. Glen says she’s very intuitive. Top Look.

Tyler, Doronulus Saxor: His alien comes from a world with 80% of the surface covered in a “liquid diamond” ocean. Wait, wouldn’t that be basically crude oil? Science experts, the show runners are not. Anyway, he’s inspired for an ancient aquatic type alien, using crustacean features. He comes up with a cool technique for horns that look crystalline - plastic vacu-form pieces with plastic wrap glued in it to fill the space, then painted on top with acrylic paint. On reveal, he’s gone with a blue overall color scheme, but he’s done some very careful and detailed decorating to give highlights and shadows and veining, and the end result is very dramatic. Also, it looks old, which is difficult to convey on an alien. I think his sculpts are exciting and his paint job is beautiful. The judges are very impressed, with the shapes, the color choices, the application, and the look. The choice of stiletto footwear also contributes to the gait looking elderly. Top Look.

Evan, Klahrio Scahara: A chieftain from a wasteland with limited resources, so he wants to use the idea of scarcity means being fat = being wealthy. His concept is a really fat gross-looking frog kinda king. I suppose that’s a creative idea. During application, he puts the face on crooked. Gah! How do you solve that? On reveal, this looks like a mess to me. First off, his fat suit seems to consist of an underframework that’s springy instead of bulky, like a big set of hoopskirts instead of blubber. Next, the color scheme is all too similar, not enough contrast to pop between the outfit and the skin tone. Third, the skewed face is immediately obvious and doesn’t look intentionally asymmetrical. Fourth, the mouth. what to say about that? The clown lips don’t help. There’s some dark patterning on the head that doesn’t really fit, and the face looks oddly like he’s wearing a bad rouge job. The only thing mildly interesting is the attempt to do something unique with the nostrils and run them up the side of the nose and over the eyes, but the execution doesn’t work. And it looks exactly like he imagined. :smack: Glen says it reminds him of an old Doctor Who makeup - that’s not a good thing. Ve thinks the paint job is highly unsuccessful. “Big giant infected thumb.” Bottom look.

Cig, Fahtu Exultina: The first thing that comes to mind for him is the wardrobe, but not the face. Hmmm. His alien lives in low light, so he’s going for a play on “blind justice”. Not going to go over well with Glen. His character’s eyes will be heat seeking organs like on pit vipers. For paint, he starts with purples, but then makes a contrasting shade of green, “because green and purple are complementary”. ? Looks bad to me, but this is just the start, not finished product. For reveal, the dress is beautiful. the sculpt shapes are intriguing and the eyes are well hidden in the wrinkles and pits. I still don’t like the green contrast with the purple hues. He was worried about the lips, but they came out okay, providing a nice contrast of bright color in the pale face. The judges think the shapes are great but the paint is incomplete, which Cig kinda felt himself. He didn’t have time to do everything he wanted with it, and it shows. Safe.

George, [never saw the name written or stated]: He decides on a bug-eyed, big-headed alien with large claws. He wants an exoskeleton type look. For the bug-eyed look, he’s going to put big dome eyes on the sides of the face and hide the model’s eyes in the nostrils. During application, he has a problem that the face piece shrank and leaves a gap with the cowl. He manages to figure a way to fold the existing piece to cover the gaps and look okay. He also wants to make big hands, so he crafts up some padded gloves and paints them up. He’s worried if they will look good or bad, but decides to go with them. For the reveal, I kinda like it. I like the big eyes, I think the color works and I like the detailing I the paint. The hands… I appreciate that he wanted to change the shape from human form, but he made strange oven mitts. I suppose his outfit looks more like a space pilot or soldier than a diplomat, which makes George’s comment that it really looks like a space diplomat seem strange. The judges say it looks like a cantina character from Star Wars. The big shapes are good but the details are coarse, which I can kinda see. Glen also doesn’t think the shapes on the back of the head feel complete. “Feels more like a toy design than something for a feature film.” Yikes. Ve thinks the oolors are garish and poorly applied. Neville thinks the eyes should either be more detailed or more solid. Bottom look.

Winner: Tyler. He’s really showing that he’s a contender in his own right.

Eliminated: Evan. Bad in a lot of ways, but the crooked application sealed it.

MacKenzie’s got a nice blue dress with sparklies. I like that color. Electric Blue?

56

This was a decent episode.

I understand why Emily went with something different than her usual, although I like her usual and would have liked to have seen her space princess or whatever. I think this is one of those times when I wasn’t that interested, aesthetically, in the final result, but the judges were impressed by it. Completely agree that it looks the most like something you could actually see on a Star Trek episode with an intergalactic congress.

Agreed with Irishman, and I guess the show itself, that Cig’s was okay I guess but not really excellent. I never really understood what was going on with the eyes.

I liked Logan’s more than the judges did. although I see what they are saying about the boring colors. For something like this, the costume really made it all come together for me – so is that a success on Logan’s part because he designed the concept, or just the staff who provide the costume?

I also liked George’s more than the judges did. I thought it looked really alien, in a fun sci fi way, so the comment about looking like an alien in the cantina as if it was a bad thing was strange to me. If I was judging this show, I would have made this Safe, and switched Cig’s to Bottom.

Oh poor Evan. This is just so weird, and the shifted face was a disaster. Because just about everything that showed his work was on the head (his hands are in gloves, everything else is covered by fabric), for the face to come out so poorly really meant there was nothing else to evaluate. I know Glenn mentioned Doctor Who, but it reminds me of another low-budget space franchise and I just can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it will come to me in the middle of the night, six months from now. Obviously the least successful BY FAR on stage. Some weeks, we have been saying that the worst look is only poor relatively speaking; that in past seasons it would have been perfectly good … not the case here. This is objectively bad.

And Tyler’s winning character was awesome, for this or any season. It just looked so good! And I think it showed that you can have a relatively simple costume choice (really, it looked like a knit dress my mom would wear, with Hot Topic gloves?) that showcases the look of the make-up.

57

I know we haven’t discussed the most recent Hawaiian gods episodes yet, and I don’t remember the details well enough to give a recap, but at this point, I’m thinking the odds are heavily favoring Cig with George appearing as a dark horse candidate. Emily has been on the brink in two of the last three competitions and I think her inexperience is starting to show. Specifically in the Hawaiian god competition – never try to do a fire or lava makeup. I don’t think anyone has ever successfully brought one off in the history of Face Off.

Also, in Tyler’s case, never put a water park on a character’s head.

58

While I did like Cig’s makeup in the tiki challenge, whenever the presentation of the makeups involves a lot of movement, I would consider how well the makeups stand up to that to be a major consideration, and the cowl that Ve was so delighted about the extent of, came quite clearly loose during the dance. An application problem not quite to the level of Evan’s skewed face the previous week, but still a real knock, IMO. I’d have given George the top look, myself.

As to Emily’s…while there’s some missteps in the silhouette, I thought it read pretty well from a distance…but, lord, the ‘crust’ bits were terrible up close. Pele was a bad choice…Like Finagle said, fire/lava is not something that’s ever come out well on the show, and I’m not really sure it can - not with the time constraints they have…maybe if they brought back the green screen challenge.

59

I understand why they give each person (or team) a slightly different reference/inspiration/starting point. But a) I really would be interested to see what people did if they all had the exact same dossier and b) there are often different degrees of difficulty depending on who gets what - that makes it much easier for some people than it does for others. And yes, while it really shows how great you are if you “rise to the challenge,” it doesn’t seem fair if you fail doing something significantly harder than one of your competitors.

60

It seems to me that giving everybody the same specific challenge can’t help but make the problem of biasing through the challenge worse. Unless it’s a late-season challenge, designed after watching them work carefully, to tailor to specifically play to (or against) the strengths of all the contestants (which would be difficult to do right, anyway).

As it is now, the contestants are more in the saddle and can choose references that they feel more confident about, or are more often struck down by dumb luck (either because they don’t really see the challenge until they’ve picked, or because another contestant beats them to the ones they think they can do), rather than the challenge design.

On the other hand, I’m with you on point one - it would be interesting to see the different way each contestant runs with the exact same specific challenge.