It’s disaster night on Face Off.
First, superheroes. We do have that same nebulous question from last season on the distinction between a superhero and comic book character. Is Dick Tracy a “superhero”? Nevertheless, it looks like most of the concepts strive more toward the superhero aspect this time.
Now we get to disaster rundown. It’s a game of who had the biggest oops.
Anthony had an awesome sculpt going for his chest and back piece to go with the arms and head that he did. Well, he struggled on time and didn’t get the mold set before the end of the second day, and then couldn’t get the mold apart on day 3, so had to punt to plan B. He made some sort of black poncho thingy. However, he made the silouette bold and had excellent work on the head and face and arms. He had the concept of a lava man thing, but actually had a good concept (unlike the lava goblin from last week), and did excellent work. The split in the skull was splendid.
Alam had the blue glass shard man. The concept was a lot of glass shards all throughout the body. But she didn’t design a good way to attach the back piece, trying to rely on glue to hold a very heavy back piece with no other anchors. Um, yeah, it wouldn’t stick, even when she cut the back off she shirt and tried to glue to his back. So she had to lose the back piece and paint his back. It didn’t look too bad from the front, with the dynamic arms, legs, and head, but when they were doing closeup review and had him turn around - ouch! She needed to have made the piece to wrap over the shoulders, maybe with straps to go under the outfit. Or else stitched/anchored it to the suit. Adhesive just isn’t going to do that.
Meagan was struggling with her face sculpt to come up with a good shape. When she got done, what she did was very poor quality. Then the arm pieces were lame (supposed to be the Twin towers, but just look like blocks with buttons), and didn’t stick, so she applied them with visible duck tape. Yeah, that’s going over well.
Michael (aka Wolverine) went for this “bringer of plagues” concept, and wanted a fancy bird mask of an ancient doctor where they used the mask to hold incense to cover the smells (I did not know that). Well, he struggled and struggled to make the mask, finally came up with something that didn’t have the right shape and had a dreadful texture - and his superhero was essentially a horrid mask and a baggy costume. Yeah, the actor did a flip on stage, but that didn’t do much for the superhero. (Okay, there was an arm mold or something, but it was easily overlooked.) As Glenn said, “having a fabricated mask as the showpiece is unacceptable”.
Katie wanted to do a guy who kinda was a punk self-costumed guy with electrical powers. Her face sculpt was deformed rather than enhancing the look, and the face mask was cheesy. Now the one thing I think she should have done was argued the point with the facemask. She deliberately made it cheesy, as something he would have cobbled together at home. Glenn’s critique was to call it some frat-boy whip together or something, but that’s the point - that’s what she was going for. But she had other problems besides that. Her face sculpt was reminiscent of Rob’s squarefaced guys from last season.
Besides the rundown on things that went wrong, I have several other observations.
I wasn’t as thrilled with House’s robot girl as the judges. I thought it was a bit gory, but also the blend line on the chest piece along the shoulders was not done well. But the rest of the execution was pretty good. But the texture of all the wires and cables was pretty good. It looked great when he was building it, just kinda a little to gory for me.
I agree that the Mercury Ray chick was the most complete superhero presence, even though the overall quality of work was sloppy. “Her panties were on the outside”. Yep, that’s a superhero.
The “Silversight” was a bird chick of some sort. I don’t get how the name fits the character. The wings were neat, wish we’d seen if they articulated or something. Lots of feathers and colors. I liked the overview and profile.
Eric F with the hair had the 40’s detective who was resurrected from death, with a hole in his skull and brain exposed, and his chest cavity open with lungs exposed. It’s a little hard to see how his chest would work without the ribs in place, but the judges liked it.
Eric Z (beard) had the guy with the mask and huge arm. That mask was rather bad. And the arm had anatomy problems.
The undersea lady had some interesting paint and texture on the head, and a decent overall look and color. However, the cowl line did not blend at the neck to the jumpsuit. Also, the tentacle direction choice reminds me of the blue chick from Return of the Jedi. But I think Alex (the blond) was successful in showing she does have ability despite the appearances from last week.
Kris made a bold-shaped face sculpt and spent effort on that, and then had a dreadful costume like a mom making a last-minute superhero outfit for her 5 year old’s Halloween. Plus, some of the texture was bad around the jaw and the paint was peeling around the nose.
Wayne (goatee, spikey hair) had a good overall look, good body, leg, and arm sculpt and paint. Even the face sculpt was good, he just didn’t get the paint done. The face was white while the rest was blue, and the texture of the face disappeared.
I think the judges made the right decisions tonight.
[spoiler]I called the winner being Anthony. His sculpt and paint work was superb. The torso would have been amazing if it had come out, the shapes were stunning - too bad, I would love to have seen it. But even without that, the overall was a success and the detail was the best by far. So that makes three wins in a row.
The loser was Michael (Wolverine). He didn’t have much in the way of make up at all, just a lousy mask and a quick set of pajamas. Second week in a row he was in bottom looks, and this is the second show, so definitely the right call. Though the other two girls with him may be following in the next couple weeks. [/spoiler]