Finally watched the finales.
First off, I think Roy was ripped off. He wasn’t eliminated for the quality of his work so much as the judge’s having a negative opinion because they felt he was too fabrication intensive. Yeah, the snake lady wig and fangs didn’t work, and they were down to the final four, so there wasn’t a lot of room, but I would have picked him over Derek. And really, on that challenge, there was room to pick him over Nicole.
That said, I was annoyed with him when he was being difficult working with Nicole on the final challenge. That was a sucky attitude. Fortunately, he managed to get through it and be helpful. And he redeemed himself with the staff thing, and then his professional attitude when Tommy fucked it up.
And Tommy deserves to be beaten with [del]the broken pieces of the[/del]a stick.
As far as the makeups go, Nicole’s was clearly the best. She had the best integrated pair and the most original look. The coral was excellent, and the pairing was cohesive. She really got the challenge, got the need for cohesion. Even though it was explicitly stated that the demons could be in any style, it works much better when you can see them as a dueling pair. Either make the demon match the witch, or make it the opposite.
Laura did great work with her witch, the earth goddess that was modeled on trees. That was spectacular. The toxic demon was a good conceptual idea for her opposite, but the execution was lackluster. By the way, who did that sculpting? I don’t recall.
Derek had fire, so he did a lava witch and a rock encrusted demon. I didn’t care much for his. The lava witch was okay, but the rock demon was odd to me.
If you look at overall consistency, Laura deserved to win. Of the three, her’s was consistently tops or safe, no bottom looks. She had great skills and great taste. The one challenge she did worst on was because she second- and third-guessed her design rather than having a strong concept and sticking to it. She did better when she had a vision to execute.
If you look at the final challenge, Nicole’s work was best. She had the best pairing, and the best overall work. There wasn’t a weak point in the make ups. I disagree with Glenn, the horns on the beast were fine. She deliberately went with non-aquatic horns because the demon was just that, a demon, and thus able to have a hodgepodge of looks. I didn’t think it distracted from the form.
And I note that Roy worked on Nicole’s team.
Normally I would agree that bringing back an eliminated contestant is a bit unfair, but Nicole got ripped off. She was sent home when it should have been Tommy. So her getting a second chance balanced out the rip off she was dealt.
Yes, I agree. I think the staff was great for him to have done because it allowed him to focus on something and distract him from his own disappointment, and that got him back into the productive frame of mind. Then when it was broken, he could move on because it had done the job. Having the staff would have been a nice prop and it was lovely, but the makeup was strong enough without it. He was able to move on and not get hung up on something he couldn’t do anything about. Kudos to him.
I don’t think water was the easiest concept. I would have called fire is the easiest and most obvious choice. But of the four, air is the one I think hardest to conceptualize, the others fairly even.
[QUOTE=Noelq]
And why in the hell did they show so much detail for the January season? Being surprised by the creations is half the fun of the show, but now I’ll just be looking for the ant-guy.
[/QUOTE]
Definitely agree. I started to watch the preview, and saw they were giving way too much detailed look at creations, so I fastforwarded. I don’t need a preview to get me to watch. I want to see the story play out, first with the challenge, then the thought process, and finally the revealed product. Stop giving me the results before the story!