Face Off Season 6 thread

Cafe Society
81

I have zero interest in anime so I wasn’t very familiar with that they were trying to achieve, but some of the designs were interesting.

I really liked the koi, it looked fantastic.

Neither of the girls wowed me. Even Corinne’s, which was in top looks, didn’t impress me. I get what the judges were talking about with the eyes, but overall, it looked very stiff to me. Not like a character, more like a doll. In previous shows, we have seen the judges complain when a finished project looks like a person wearing a mask … to me, this was exactly the problem here.

We knew the “no one gets sent home” was going to come eventually, they made this feature a big part of this season. I suppose this episode was as good as any other.

I feel like they’ve done challenges that incorporate some kind of alter-ego aspect in the past … I never really get why this makes a good challenge. If a contestant says they feel like a fish, so they made a fish, how do you really judge that? Maybe they do, or maybe they had a great idea for a fish design. Some of the contestants seem to mentally labor A LOT over the alter-ego part, which is such a poor strategy and sometimes it results in a design that doesn’t work in other ways. Just start with a cool design and then SAY it’s your alter-ego. This isn’t a right answer/wrong answer situation.

82

Yep. That makeup was fantastic. And all the rest were just disappointing.

I couldn’t believe how stiff the girls made their anime dopplegangers. There was no mobility in the faces at all. This seemed, on the face of it, one of the simpler builds and most of them failed at it. I’m a bit torn at the bottom looks – the plant thing was pretty bad, but mostly because it had little or no anime influence. The other one had a decent concept if he could have pulled it off, but failed dismally on the fabrication and the application.

We probably do have a new front-runner for likely overall winner.

83

I loved the 4 armed character. It really looked like the artist who made it, and it was well done and funny. But yeah, the koi was amazing and deserved to win.

84

I agree I’m not entirely certain how you convey Anime in live action.

My biggest gripe about the faces was the people faces all had the same texture, that was rough, not smooth - they didn’t look like skin.

Daran’s fish was great work, except to me the face didn’t look painted, but okay.

And Corrine once again got a Top Look with a minimal character. Though the eyes were better done. I was worried when the judges commented that hers was the only one that really said Anime. I do kinda agree, with my caveat at the top.

I liked the 4 arm guy, but he got the reaction I expected out of the judges. And Niko’s guy did look like Niko, so he had that going on.

And then they pulled out their one save. On the one hand, I kinda saw it coming, because nobody had the massive screw ups we’ve been seeing up till now, so nobody’s was a colossal wreck. Even Graham’s wasn’t a disaster, despite what Ve said. He went with the plant guy on the grounds that it was his alter ego. Makes as much sense as anything else.

On the other hand, there’s still plenty of folks around, so that’s the one save, I guess we don’t have to worry about that any more.

85

And then George gets crippled this week, and I’m thinking “man, I bet they wish they had their save back”. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

Daran was the obvious win. His split face was once again a superb way to mask the underlying face, this time hiding the nose in the seam between the faces with a pucker for the opening. Brilliant. My only complaint is that I would have hid the third mouth, I think it detracted as an odd insert, but Glenn even commented on that somehow not being as glaringly atrocious as it should be. Kudos to him on another win.

I wasn’t as thrilled with Chloe’s as the judges. First off, the thing over the eye didn’t read as an ear to me - even after Mr. Westmore stressed the importance of making it look right. The black and white look was okay, and it worked well enough without the amputated leg since she ran out of time, but my other big complaint is the exposed brain. Once again, someone has gone for exposed brain - it’s an overdone concept. Even more, though, I think there’s a serious problem with not making the skull thick enough and the brain too large. How thick is the skull along the front, sides, and back There doesn’t seem to be much room there for more than skin. That’s a common failing, and it stands out here. If you’re going to expose the brain, at least account for the skull bone.

Then we get the bottom looks. Rashaad was an early favorite, but he’s been struggling the last few weeks. This is his first Low rather than just being safe, but his last few haven’t met the standard he set early with his 4 Wins. I think he really suffered from lack of direction and concept, like Glenn observed, and he would admit it.

The jaw thing was just atrocious. He’s not the first to make that mistake. It is really difficult to pull off like you’re peeling skin back to expose underlying stuff. Even the first Terminator movie struggled with it on Arnie. You have to build up around the region and then somehow try to make it look like you didn’t build it up. Much easier on a full face construct than a partial reveal like this. He just didn’t get the jaw to look like the underlying jaw, and the lips and mouth were fully formed, then the front of the jaw was doubled. Just a crappy execution of a stupendously challenging idea.

But I’m really glad the finally called out Corrine on her level of work and sent her home. This was something like the fifth challenge in a row she did far less than the others. She’s been under working and it finally caught up with her.

She had amazingly clean edges, such that you couldn’t tell the actor was wearing prosthetics. Awesome. But the prosthetics didn’t serve any purpose. Her leeches were there but boring. She could have had a gaping wound and leeches inside the wound, or burrowing in the skin, etc. I’m not sure leeches burrow, but gashes in the skin would have worked.

86

Other comments:

Several of the contestants didn’t seem to know how their instruments were used.

Had Rashaad never heard of trepanning?

George seemed to think his ribspreader was for spreading skin, instead of spreading ribs.

I don’t know how a hand awl is useful in digging a hole to extract a fetus.

I can see how a bone saw is used to put faces together - you’re marrying the underlying architecture including bones, cheeks, noses, not just smearing the skin on top, so after consideration I see how Daran got his right.

87

‘rib spreader’ ? the thing looked like the ice block pickeruppers.

88

I imagine it takes a lot of force to spread ribs. Leverage helps.

89

the points were facing the wrong direction to ‘spread’ anything - more akin to picking something up -

90

Even more telling, here are pictures of real rib spreaders: Rib Retractor for sale | eBay

91

Overall, I liked this episode.

Absolutely agree with Irishman that a lot of these folks didn’t really get how the instruments would be used! I think they’re supposed to research, too.

I liked Tyler’s two-headed character more than Daren’s. In general this season, I seem to like Tyler’s work better than the judges do, and the judges seem more impressed with Daren than I am.

I thought Chloe’s was okay … but not necessarily better than others that were Safe this week. Whatever.

Niko was totally a miss, and I would have been fine if he had ended up in Bottom Looks. He did express a concern that it was in poor taste … and I think it’s the kind of thing where if he executed it flawlessly, it could have worked instead of seeming distasteful. But I thought the face was mask-like, and the concept didn’t go with his medical instrument AT ALL. You cut a fetus out, you don’t go in with a drill.

I usually like Rashaad, but I think he never really grasped what trepanation is, and if you miss that fundamental point, it’s probably hard to do well with this challenge. But there was no excuse for the jaw, like Glen said, it’s completely unclear if that’s someone else’s jaw, or the character’s own jaw being exposed, or what.

92

Am I the only one who thought Corinne’s leeches were actually pretty good? So what if it was minimal? What can you do with leeches? I don’t know – maybe she should have gone with giant leeches? Her model looked like I’d expect someone who was being tortured with leeches to look. So it worked for me.

I would have picked Rashaad as the bottom look (even though he showed promise early in the season), just because of the wasted opportunity. I mean – you have a tool that drills holes in the skull and you don’t do anything with it? He could have had snakes crawling in and out of the holes and that would have really, really creepy. Or even just machinery or tubes or steam or random mad scientist artifacts.

Other than that, most people did a competent job which I’d expect, because it was essentially glorified Halloween makeup, which should be the bread and butter of most makeup artists. I thought the electric girl was quite good, as well as the guy with the hollowed out chest.

93

I actually LOVED the leech on the eye in particular, it genuinely creeped me out every single time it was on screen!

I liked the concept, and agree it could have been done successfully in her minimalist style, but here’s where I think it suffered:

  1. the leeches themselves were pretty blobby, which I know is more or less what a real leech looks like … but for a horror makeup, maybe they should have been more visually interesting, like even a creepy color or something like that. Or show a leech that has burst open from too much blood. Ew.

  2. it needed more yuckiness for this challenge (and I’m usually a very strong supporter of the idea that not every make-up needs to be a horror make-up) - so let’s see a big gaping wound on the guy with leeches on/in it, or leeches crawling around under the skin.

94

Preach it brother. When her model came out I completely forgot it was supposed to be an ear and wondered what that spiral-y thing was on his eye.

I didn’t love the black and white like the judges did, but with the explanation that he stepped off of a black and white movie, I accepted it.

I really couldn’t get past the jaw. Also, Michael Westmore told him to use different shades to make the skin look like patchwork but he didn’t do that either. Or if he tried he botched it.

It seemed lazy to me. In a contest with two and half face man, a woman holding her unborn child from her open stomach, and black and white movie monster she gives us bondage man, covered with leaches.

95

I understand that the scientist is mad, but why would he sew an ear on right there? it seemed so random.

96

I was not a fan of the Black & White Frankenstein’s monster one. The ear, first off, was awful. I was very surprised she did not get dinged for that (or that they didn’t air it.) I also did not like how the make-up was in Black & White, yet the blood was red. The torn wrists did look pretty cool though. I thought the judges would ask why the model was using a crutch, since there was nothing wrong with his legs, but again they didn’t bring it up.

I also did not like Corine’s leech man, and I disagree that her make-up was even that well applied. The nose prosthetic had huge edges, it looked like she just stuck a fake nose on him.

I thought re: the jaw, that Rashad was going for the idea that the mad plastic surgeon fused someone else’s jawbone onto her own jaw, because it was just so obviously not her jaw that was being revealed. (Unless I am just giving him too much credit, but he’d been so good in the past that I don’t think he would purposefully do such a glaringly huge misstep.)

I was 100% in agreement with both the winner & loser.

97

My money says that she half-assed the painting and couldn’t complete it on time. Since it came out monochrome, she decided to spin the result and pretend it was on purpose. Ve Neill even mentioned that you have to adjust the colors to make black and white painting look black and white and that Chloe’s paint actually looked more blue. Again, I think that Chloe was aiming for the typical dead-guy paint scheme with blues and greens, but ran out of time.

The crutch is essentially the same thing. She’d been planning to make it look like one leg was cut off at the knee and even tried to cast a piece at the last minute. The editing never mentioned the knee piece again and so I think she just scrapped it for lack of time.

98

I really liked the other two-faced guy that Tyler did. I loved how there was a sense of motion, of twisting. I’d give that one the win.

I’m betting on Rashad, Tyler, and Daran for the final 3.

99

So SyFy lied and gave them a random prop and just called it rib spreaders? I did think it looked more like ice block carriers, but going by the description given, he should have spread ribs. Going by the device, he went with pulling skin apart. Hmmm, guess that’s a wash.

I don’t get how embalming fluid goes with a conjoined twin, and I don’t think the pulling on the skin was sensible or accurate.

Agreed.

I didn’t care that his was “poor taste” - it’s a horror show. Poor taste is a selling point. My complaint is I couldn’t figure out what was up with her face. Why did her eyes look like that? Was she being punched in the face? What did that have to do with the fetus, or with the hand drill?

Yes, you have a device for cutting holes in the skull - do something with the holes in the head. Put things in through the holes, have things sticking out of the holes. Why else cut holes? Just to cut holes?

Agreed. It didn’t make sense at all when she started it, and it didn’t look like an ear, and the color scheme was off, and the brain issues. Yeah, I wouldn’t have made her top looks.

We must have been watching different shows, I couldn’t see the edges and the nose didn’t look fake at all. Unfortunately I can’t find close up pics online. The only ones SyFy has are full body shots. You’d think with the close ups they take for the show, they could repost those online pretty easy.

The problem is that it was just vague enough that it wasn’t clear. I wanted to read it that way, too, but then it is hard to decide. Basically his was a clusterfuck of poorly thought out ideas without cohesion.

They specifically mentioned her at one point looking at how much work she had and ditching it as too much work and focusing on the face.

100

Analysis time.

By the numbers:

Daran: 3 Win, 2 High, 2 Foundation; 2 Low
Tyler: 2 Win, 2 High; 1 Low
George: 1 Win, 3 High, 1 Foundation; 2 Low
Chloe: 1 Win, 2 High; 2 Low
Niko: 1 Win, 1 High; 2 Low
Rashaad: 0 Win, 4 High; 1 Low
Graham: 0 Win, 3 High; 1 Low that was a Save

The numbers suggest Daran is the leader, with Tyler and George the likely other finalists. Daran is also on a streak of success, not that that means anything. Corrine had two Highs in a row before going out.

I think Rashaad deserved wins early that he didn’t get, but hasn’t been performing to the same level in the last three challenges. I’d probably put Rashaad ahead of Chloe on success with 4 High and only 1 Low against her 3 High/Win and 2 Lows, but that’s all in how you want to count things. Graham has only had one 1 Low, while Daran and George have had 2, but Graham also would have been eliminated without the Save.

I think it might be Daran, George, and Tyler for the final three, with Rashaad a contender but he has to get back on track. I think Chloe and Niko are next on the chopping block.