You know, half the time, I think the designers just aren’t listening to the concept behind the challenge. They hear “Video Game Characters”, and then their brains shut off.
“Well, he was an aristocrat, but now is a weeper!” No. You have Weeper. Do Weeper. Don’t over-indulge youself. I was so happy when the judge shut her down hard.
“He used to be a priest, but now is getting infected!”. No. Your desire to modify the character isn’t in line with the game challenge.
Rod’s glass-in-the-face was just unneeded.
Yeah, it was Tommy’s time. If he’d had one more day, he would have been fine. He’s got good ideas, but his follow-through needs a slower pace.
And I think the use of the tattoos, which is (Erich?) area of specialty was well done. Plus, used properly, you could hide any flaws with it.
Loved the episode. Still wish it was longer. Drop the initial challenges, and just focus on the major competition.
Gotta disagree with you a little bit, Noelq - I liked this foundation challenge because it took them out of their comfort zones - the guys, especially. And as Meredith reminded them, makeup artists don’t just work on monster movies.
I think the judges got it right this week, with the winner* and* the loser. Tommy seems like a nice guy, but he hasn’t produced a “Wow!” makeup in any episode. And Derek knocked it out of the park. (I got a laugh out of Ve’s comment about his character, “His nose has biceps.”)
Still think it’s going to come down to Laura and Roy.
I read the contestants" bios on the website, and found out that Roy is the director of makeup at a haunted house here in the Atlanta area. Definitely have to pay a visit in October. I work in a store in Tucker, too, so I sometimes keep a half-eye open for any guys in straw cowboy hats.
I think it was interesting that both the winner and the loser had those massive forarms, but one did it well and one did it badly. It was Tommy’s time to go, he’s been in the bottom too many times.
This episode was interesting. I liked the foundation challenge with the avant garde dresses and the need to match the makeup. I totally wouldn’t be able to do this at all, but it was fun to watch. At least Rob realized he was doing lousy. “Hot mess”, but he knew at the time. “I’m actually making her look worse.” I loved his response to the judges. “Well, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that she’s a really nice person.”
What was up with Alana’s makeup? Just purplish smears, no definitive limits or lines, no pattern or feel. At least Rob new he had a mess.
I appreciated the comments of the guest judge. I agree with the lines of the green makeup making stark edges on her face to match the edges of the dress. Interesting comment that Tommy could have pulled in the blue of the shoes. Makes sense, that one element was different, so the makeup could have been used to tie it together. Shows the artistic understanding. Roy’s curve was also great, with the right sweep to match the dress and hair, and fit the face structure well.
For the Spotlight Challenge it took me a bit like the rest of them to grasp the distorted proportions element. What causes the distortions? Are they an effect of some agent, or are they more an aesthetic of how that world works? I loved when Laura realized she wasn’t going big enough in her exaggerations. That was the kind of insight. Interesting that both her and Roy only had safe runs this time.
I agree on Tommy being the loser. He’s had several bad spots, just isn’t getting stuff right. The weird bulges on the arms, the lack of skill in attaching the arms and using duck tape, and then not ensuring the duck tape was fully covered. Agreed that Eric did great with the shapes and with the tattooing.
I didn’t see it explained or mentioned. It stood out to me.
I disagree 100%. They were told that the weepers were people infected by a plague. It’s completely reasonable, and IMHO preferable, that they think about who the weeper was before the infection. I was shocked that Glenn wasn’t going for Alanna’s concept (he seemed happy with Laura’s though, I thought.) If they’re just generic looking people crying blood, that’s really boring, I’d think.
No argument there, and despite the praise for his face, I thought it STILL looked like a close relative of his other faces.
I love how Rod thought long and hard about how not to do the same face, and decided the problem was the ears.
I think the point is that the game itself has iconic, distinct looks for the 4 character types. When you defy that, you miss the point of the challenge. There were two other players doing actual Aristocrats. Making your character look too much like an Aristocrat would weaken the advantage of doing a different character type. I thought she had an interesting idea to make a deep character, but for the visual appeal she needed to stay with the game motif.
I agree glass in the face is an odd choice. He baked in one transient event to his character’s overall appearance. Not typically a good choice. He did a good job of oversizing the head, and making a good prosthesis. The look was somewhat different. But it did still look a bit like his others.
It was interesting to watch the designers with the kids. In half of them, they took the kids’ drawings, and made a natural progression with them - Green eye guy and three-eye guy. Then the other half took what the kids were saying, and went in a totally different direction - blue blob guy (Rod) and the others.
I’m not sure if the artists’ desires over-rode what the kids were drawing, or if the kids just lacked the talent to draw what was in their heads. Or, you know, they were amazed at their words being turned into pictures, so they made things up :).
I agree with the winner. She kept the original drawing concept almost intact, while making it a real-world possibility.
I agree with Rod being voted off. It was the same big head. Same nose structure, same brow, everything.
I usually don’t like it when they bring failed contestants back, but I can see why they had to - they needed seven people in order to have the seven winning kids get on TV. I’ll give them a pass on it, this time.
Yup. Laura’s monster was true to the kid’s original idea, but looked professional, like something out of a Sid and Marty Krofft show. Scary, but not too scary. Roy’s was also a good mixture of the scary and the cute. Both of these artists produce a solid and interesting makeup, every week.
I’m sorry to see Rod go over this makeup. I get what the judges didn’t like (although I didn’t see the similarities to his Star Wars or Queen of Hearts sculpts), but I liked that he was sticking to his “client’s” vision. And I really liked his color palette.
Alana’s concept was interesting, but the nostrils weren’t immediately obvious as nostrils. And it was very easy to see which pair were the actor’s eyeholes. Meh, but she’s done good stuff on past episodes, so I’m glad she survived. Sarah’s dessert monster was clever, too - one of her best so far.
As to bringing back Nicole, I thought Roy had an interesting point - this is after all a competition, and he survived several challenges that she did not have to face. Still, I liked Nicole’s work, so I’m glad she made it back, rather than C.C. or Tommy.
I really thought Derek was a goner, and he was the one I would have picked to go home. Although I agree Roy was doing the same thing over and over. They told him, but he didn’t seem to get it. It was possible to do a big head for the client’s vision, but do a DIFFERENT big head.
Did anyone catch the commercial with Rod on it? It had him making a piece for a Flavor Monster. The amusing thing about it was that it looked exactly like all his others; big headed. I knew when I saw that he’d be going home. And rightfully so.
Watched this episode last night. The hints about the returning contestants wasn’t a surprise, but looking at the rundown and Nicole was the only one I really wanted back. The rest were fired for cause. She was the only one that got screwed. Yeah, her paint job sucked, but hers was at worst the third worst makeup that episode. She should have been there over Tommy. I definitely didn’t want Tommy back - we finally got rid of him. So I actually cheered out loud in my empty house when Nicole won the Foundation Challenge.
I agree with your assessment, Noelq, about how the contestants worked with the kids to conceptualize their monster. How much do you connect to the picture and how much leeway do you give to convert the kid’s ideas into actual artistic skill? Nicole was working with the boy who drew some type of spider but then described a “vampire alien batlike creature” or some such. So she tried to draw out the features he wanted on his monster rather than sticking to the picture. Some of the pictures were pretty generic, so that was an interesting approach to give the kid what hey envisioned rather than what they could draw.
On Rod’s beast, I liked the use of the tentacle suit - he did a good job hiding the body in the tentacles. But he did the same basic head again, and it’s amusing to watch him just not get the point. There’s nothing wrong with doing another big head, the problem is that he only has one basic face shape. He needs to study some pictures or look at the people around him and try sketching the differences in their facial shapes so he can do something different. Also, I liked that he kept the color scheme of the kid’s picture, but would have changed things. I would have eliminated the second mouth where the actors mouth was, and made teeth in the nostrils. That would have conveyed better that the mouth was for breathing and the nose was for eating. When I saw him draw out his conceptual shape, I called it that he was going to lose.
Roy’s was a very good adaptation to match the drawing of the three-faced monster. He got the colors right and the features right. His efforts to make the eyes blink didn’t work out, which is the only reason he didn’t win for me. He made the effort but had problems with the construction. Another day to sort out the difficulties might have done him wonders. And one of the judges whined that “he does good construction fast doesn’t mean he has to do it every week”. Hey, if he can pull it off, that just shows his superiority. Like I said up front, his downfall might be biting off too much and not getting it done.
Laura’s did stay true to the original with the added elements suggested by the artist, and did look like a Muppet kind of monster. Glad she won.
Alana’s wasn’t that bad. She would have been better off obscuring the eyes better, both by masking the contour of the nose and by shading the back of the other nostrils black. I might have suggested slanting the nostrils differently and making an even spread up the face, with another set in the forehead. I also didn’t like the hat. It looked fine and fit the head, but then it takes the hat off and you realize that the thing at the top is the monster’s eye. Why would the monster wear a hat that covers the eye? Oops. I didn’t follow the comment about the paint job obscuring the detail of the sculpt. It looked fine to me on that score.
Derek had an interesting face and the paint job looked fine to me, I didn’t get the comment about the lack of texture. But his wardrobe had issues and he mangled the wings. They didn’t look like flesh wings, they looked like bunched plastic raincoat. It needed to attach better and drape better.
Sarah’s sweetie monster was okay, the textures and colors were interesting, but the shapes and colors in the face didn’t convert well on TV and I couldn’t see the mouth until they did the morph image, which had different lighting. This challenge was more in her skillset than sculpting facial appliances, so the fact she didn’t win marks her eventual performance in this contest.
He could have reshaped the face and still had a large head. He could have made a cartoony square block instead. He could have made a square top half and then round chin. He needed to do anything but the similar face to what he’s already done. The fact that he can’t understand the elements that make the faces similar is why he shouldn’t win.
Nicole was only let go two episodes back, so really there was only two challenges she didn’t have to face that he did. Whereas CC was out early, and so bringing her back would have been a big shortcut. But the balance on that is that the earlier the person was let go and thus the more they skipped, the overall worse talent they likely have and thus are more likely to be let go again sooner.
Tommy is the outlier to that, having beat Nicole in the one outright bad call I’ve seen. There’ve been calls where they could go either way, where there was justification for one or another depending on what you prefer, but that was an odd call to lose on. I’m glad she’s back.
So, to adjust my handicapping from before,
Roy: Roy and Laura have similar stats, with 4 HIGHs and a WIN for each. But Roy has won a Foundation Challenge, and has been on a winning team twice, which exceeds what Laura has done.
Laura: overall done really well. Judges might pick her over Roy if his constructs don’t pan out, like with the blinking eyes.
Nicole: Except for her OUT, she has consistent INs, similar to Alana. I think her skillset is a bit more than Alana’s and so I give her the edge. Unless cartoon red hair trumps purple.
Alana: Alana’s lack of experience/skills is her weakness. She’s been consistently IN except 1 WIN (largely due to Roy) and this LOW.
Sarah: Sarah has good craft skills, but just isn’t getting the sculpts right. Next week is the Dr Suess challenge, so her skillset is advantage.
Derek: Derek did an impressive job on the Dishonored challenge, but then this was weaker. He’s hit and miss - inconsistent is the best description.
Of course Tommy and Rod went out matching my prior handicapping.
I really liked his tentacle body, too. When his actor first came out, it took me a few seconds to see his body amongst them.
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He could have reshaped the face and still had a large head. He could have made a cartoony square block instead. He could have made a square top half and then round chin. He needed to do anything but the similar face to what he’s already done. The fact that he can’t understand the elements that make the faces similar is why he shouldn’t win.
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But that head did not look to me like the Queen of Hearts or cantina guy heads he made.
[QUOTE=Irishman; 15560665]
Nicole was only let go two episodes back, so really there was only two challenges she didn’t have to face that he did. Whereas CC was out early, and so bringing her back would have been a big shortcut. But the balance on that is that the earlier the person was let go and thus the more they skipped, the overall worse talent they likely have and thus are more likely to be let go again sooner.
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Yeah, but Roy’s point is valid. That the show does not attempt to create interpersonal conflict, and that the contestants all seem to like each other, shouldn’t distract from the fact that it *is * a contest. They each want to see everyone else go home.
Oh, I agree, it is a contest, and there is inherently something unfair about bringing back an eliminated contestant. It smacks of shortcutting. The later it happens, the less fair it is to the contestants who played the whole game. The sole mitigating factor is the person eliminated earlier tends to be crappier, so they’ll just be eliminated again. Probably. Unless there’s a fluke.
And ultimately they do want everyone else to go home. “It’s sad to see you go, better you than me.” This team seems the most cohesive as a whole. Other teams had cliques, but this one seems to all generally get along with no real friction. The drama was all in Joe.
Yes. I mean, I’m glad Nicole is back - I liked her work, and, frankly, see’s very easy on the eyes. I’d have been much more unhappy if it’d one of the less-skilled artists.
The lack of artificial drama is the one thing that I love about this reality show. These are people who are trying to win a competition and they help each other. It shows a creative process and they don’t get all snarky and backstabbing. They let their work speak for itself. If it’s good, they know why because the judges will let them know why. If it’s bad, again, they will know why because the judges actually give them good, constructive criticism without being demeaning.
