Could’ve made a sandy pig.
Good episode tonight. There was really only one weak entry, it was obvious, and while he did good work throughout the competition, he deserved to go home on this one.
The construction robot was very clunky, but intentionally so; I got it.
I wasn’t as thrilled with the hairdresser robot as the judges were; it didn’t seem as polished as the firefighter and surgeon.
The surgeon robot was very good, it had a lot of good ideas, but the fact that it was clearly constructed from PVC pipe, for me, detracted from the overall. I know, it was the work of a few days and it was impressive for the limited amount of time, but still.
The firefighter robot was just awesome and definitely deserved to win. It was one of, if not the best thing I’ve seen on the show.
I agreed that Rashad’s firefighter deserved the win. But just two questions. Why paint it red like the fire it has to fight, or like a burn victim? And was that a gun on its arm?
I completely agree with DCnDC that George’s hairdresser wasn’t that polished, and I thought the paint job on the visor looked a tad sloppy, but comparatively speaking I thought it was second best.
Tyler’s surgeon - Kind of reminded me of the Borg. I thought there was too much going on. It looked a little cluttered to me.
Niko’s construction worker - Kind of reminded me of a Cyberman. I thought the face was weird, but I liked the light on top of the head and I thought it had a decent body.
Daran’s Photographer - Those things on the top of its head made me think of a Dalek. The body was boring and Daran did a completely obvious choice (something he was told not to do), a human camera. He really deserved to go home.
Rashaad’s was hands down the best. Ve said ready to be put in a movie, and she’s right. It really read robot. The fabrication choices were great, and the approach to distressing the paint to make it look like it was a working robot really sold it.
[QUOTE=Nobody]
Why paint it red like the fire it has to fight, or like a burn victim? And was that a gun on its arm?
[/QUOTE]
Ever hear of “Fire engine red”? Fire engines have a long history of being red, I’m sure that was what he was drawing on. The thing over the shoulder was a hose and water sprayer. My one complaint - even if he’s a robot, he’s still going to need vastly more water than a human form can carry. Firefighters tie in to hydrants through pumper trucks and dump hundreds of gallons of water. So this robot would still need to haul around hoses and water lines. But I’m okay if he has an emergency self supply for a small job. Just something to keep in mind when designing.
George’s hairdresser - the problem working in foam, the texture wasn’t smooth like you expect on metal. Still, I thought his turned out pretty good. The eyepiece was a good move, hide the eyes. Mr. Westmore gave him great advice.
Tyler’s surgeon didn’t work as well for me. Despite what they said, the bodysuited form still stood out to me too much. It isn’t like C3PO from Star wars, where there’s one small bodysuit segment painted to look like wires and stuff, there was a lot of bodysuit form visible. Also, the face didn’t work for me because it was clear. Maybe it worked better in person, but to me, being clear, it wasn’t visible as a face and it made the underlying actor’s face visible. I would have painted it. Also, you’re right, I wouldn’t expect a high-dollar robot to be made of PVC pieces. Going white made it hard to mask the materials.
Niko’s construction worker - being big wasn’t the problem, but the shapes were odd and not eye appealing. He did the same kind of thing in the face he did last time, but not as well, and frankly he needs another gimmick. Plus, in keeping with past work from him, it just didn’t feel smooth in texture. The texture read funny. I think it was reasonably successful in reading like a construction robot, and the hydraulics were great and the flashing light was good, but overall it wasn’t spectacular.
But Daran’s sucked ass. No contest on whose was the worst - Daran’s was a neon sign of badness. I think his attitude “I don’t do robots” infected him from the beginning of the challenge, and manifested throughout his entire process. He didn’t really know how to approach doing a full-body robot, so he just concentrated on the head, and then went (a) obvious, and (b) clunky and strange. The torso being a board with a light, and then not doing anything with the arms and legs, and then that codpiece - it’s almost like he decided he was ready to go home and worked to ensure he was worse than anyone else could fuck up accidentally. “Even Niko can’t mess up this bad.”
Also, similar to the comment I made on Rashaad’s firefighter about the integrated hose, I didn’t like his concept of the bright light straight on the chest. Yes, cameras often integrate a flash, and cheap cameras point it at the area. But professional photographers have a lot of tools to create ambient, softer light that illuminates the area, not a harsh spot directly on the subject. Making a reflective screen from his back overhead, and the light shining up that way would have been far more creative and been more similar to professional photographer techniques to light an area.
So, we’re down to four. Their current standings:
Tyler: 4 Wins, 3 Highs; only 1 Low.
George: 1 Win, 4 High, 1 Foundation Challenge; 2 Lows.
Rashaad: 1 Win, 4 Highs; 1 Low.
Niko: 1 Win, 2 High; 3 Lows.
Daran’s had 3 wins under his belt, and his wins were awesome, but he had 3 Lows going in to this challenge, and his lows stunk.
Going by numbers, Tyler is the leader. He has good concepts and good executions most of the time. He has the most Wins and least Lows left, and his Win/High tally is 7 out of 12. He’s topped 50%. Daran was second best at 5/12.
George and Rashaad are effectively even, with George having a Foundation Challenge Win over Rashaad but an additional Low look over Rashaad.
In comparison, some interesting stats.
Season 1, Conor won with 5/8 highs. Tate had 4/8.
Season 2, Rayce won with an impressive 7/10 highs. RJ and Ian had 4 and 3, respectively.
Season 3, this one has probably the anomaly in that the winner, Nicole, only had 2 win/highs going into the finale. That was complicated by her elimination and then winning a return after missing 2 weeks. She beat out Laura who had 7/10 going into the finale, and Roy who had 6/10 before being eliminated in the 10th week. Roy probably has the best stats for someone eliminated prior to the finale.
Season 4, both Anthony and Wayne went into the finale with 6 w/h out of 10, but Anthony had 5 wins while Wayne didn’t have a single win. But that answered another of my questions. Rashaad was concerned about going into the finale without a Win, but it’s happened. Wayne did it in season 4, and beat out Eric Fox who had a Win to do it.
Season 5, Laura had 7/12 going into the finale, against Tate and Roy with 5 and 3 respectively. Miranda had an impressive 6/12 before she crashed and burned.
Basically, studying the numbers, nothing is a lock. Season 3 proved the best record going into the finale doesn’t always win, and a better than 50% got eliminated. Season 4 showed you can get to the finale without a single Win. Season 5 showed someone with an awesome success record can implode. Beki from season 2 is another contestant (besides Daran) who went out because they chose to go small late in the game when everyone else was going big.
Still, if I had to make a call, I would expect Niko to be eliminated next week, and expect Tyler to take it. Rashaad and George both have had more ups and downs, and consistency favors Tyler. However, the judges have been overly impressed (IMO) by George at times, and Rashaad is a monster at scope of what he can accomplish when he’s on. Like today’s win.
Really liked that episode!
I’m so glad Rashaad finally got a win, I have liked him a lot since the first episode. There have been several weeks where I was surprised he was only safe instead of in top looks. I think in general, his aesthetic approach is very similar to my own taste. I thought the fireman was great overall, he really deserved this one.
I also generally like Tyler’s work, and I thought the surgeon was … pretty okay, not the best. I liked the concept a lot more when he was describing it. My husband was also annoyed by how PVC-y it was … but I was okay with this. In the 1950s, everyone thought all our technology today would look awesome, so I would believe that in the future, the more functional tech will still look mostly functional. Frankly, it will probably still be PVC, that stuff is lasting. I’m glad Ve picked up on what he was doing with the face … I can completely see the marketing materials in the future pointing out that this surgeon robot has a Friendly Doctor Face ™ to make the patient feel comfortable.
I could see the good elements of the hair dresser, but very much agree with the previous posters who thought it looked a little sloppy. The paint was kind of weird, the lines indicating the metal plates were wobbly and definitely looked painted on. The accessories on the hand should have looked really neat … but they looked stuck on to me. I was expecting more of an Edward Scissorhands thing where the blades were convincingly an extension of the hand. This looked like someone wearing a scissors glove.
I felt the judges were right on with Niko – they recognized the aspects that were okay, but the total package didn’t seem to be there.
Ugh, Daran! What WAS that? His “I don’t do robots” mantra was annoying, I’m glad the judges were critical of it (and they didn’t even have to hear it as much as we did). I still think he should have gone home last week, I would have liked to see what Graham would have done with this challenge.
And I agree with **Irishman **that Niko is most likely the next to go … unless somehow the challenge is right in his wheelhouse. He has shown some GREAT work, but usually his concepts and execution just aren’t as tight as the other contestants.
Excellent episode, four good to great pieces and then one tire fire.
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Rashaad - just spot on top to bottom. One of the best make-up jobs I have ever seen on the show because t was so finished looking, yet also was a lot of work.
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George - I personally loved the retro-look of it, going away from the Transformers-afication of bulky massive robots to more the Metropolis automaton. It certainly wasn’t as finished, but I loved the concept.
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Tyler - I liked this as well and it certainly seems to make sense in terms of how robotics actually are developing, more function over form. Having said that, it was hard to actually see what was going on in some ways.
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Niko - A bit of a dropoff from the top 3, but not bad. I think conceptually it was very good, but proportions were a bit off and it was kind of unfinished looking. The actuators, however, were a very good design decision.
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Me - The Robot I made out of a cardboard box and some silver paint when I was 8 years old was a takeoff on a standard trope, silver with a square head and arms that didn’t really move well, pretty hard to move in at all and it started to fall apart immediately. Pus it had not real function except to be a robot. Still not as bad as…
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Daran - Um, what the hell was that? Not only does he know nothing about making a a robot (as he told the judges) but he clearly knows next to nothing about photography. Let’s see a Robot Photographer…I know I will make the robot the camera and by that I mean i will put a crappy light-like thing on the chest and then some random camera-y things on the head and well there should be a codpiece because…I don’t do robots! Happy birthday and good-bye!
If I have any complaint about Rashad’s firebot, it’s that the design looks very Iron Man, and very generic tough-guy. Even the paint is very derivative of Iron Man. You could just as easily have called it a soldier bot or a police bot, etc. But that’s a very minor complaint because it was really very good work and a fully justified win. I’m especially impressed with the amount of work he got done - frankly, if you told me that all five guys had spent a week on that suit, I’d have believed you (and he found time to help Niko on top of it).
I think I liked Tyler’s concept much more because it was such a perfect vision of what I think humanoid robots will be in real life - certainly what they’ll be in the near term.
As for Daran… I’ve never liked his work as much as the judges have and so I’ve been somewhat rooting against him this season. But this was just so bad! Seriously, the “I don’t do robots” line is such a cop out. He could have done a flesh-and-blood-looking character, called it a wedding photographer (“It has to look human to avoid scaring the guests”) and at least he’d have been able to beat Niko for one more round. What he did was seriously embarrassing, even by Robby the Robot standards of 1950’s pulp sci-fi. Hell, he could have resurrected the guitar-fusion character from earlier in the season and that would have made a pretty decent robot.
I missed mention of why they had an extra day for this episode. Was it simply because of the complexity of the task?
Bob
Man, I totally agree. The judges seemed to like it a lot, but I thought the execution was just ok and the concept was kind of a disaster: too many odd projections, exposed wires, etc. Wouldn’t you want something sleek and totally self-contained and not so readily susceptible to contamination in the OR?
I’m probably way over-thinking this 
No, I agree. Also, at the beginning he said he wanted it to look friendly. While I know he abandoned giving it a human face, while it didn’t look scary, it didn’t look that friendly to me either.
Thinking about it, I had another observation about George’s hairdresser along the same issues I had with the photobot’s light and the firefighter’s hose. The hairdresser bot has a blowdryer coming out of the chest, to provide utility, right? Now think about the placement of that dryer. Now I don’t know about you, but when I use a hairdryer, I need to move it all around my head - over the top as well as from the sides and front. I need lots of directions and locations. So that blowdryer is situated at bellybutton level on the stylist. How exactly is that useful for hair drying?
It’s like those hand blowdryers in restrooms that you hit the button, they’re often mounted in an awkward spot, maybe too high or too low. I’ve run into them at movie theaters typically located just too low to be comfortable trying to dry my hands, I have to hunch over a little. They do it for children and wheelchairs, but couldn’t they put one a little higher for men? No. And then think about the options for drying your face. There’s a flip panel you have to hold open to redirect the flow up. Yeah, that works.
That’s the feeling I get from George’s blowdryer. It’s just in the wrong location and not really useful where it is.
It did feel very Iron Man and very superhero robot.
This late in the game when they are working alone, they like to give them an extra day.
But he did give it a human face - that was the thing projecting out from the head on the PVC pipes. It was a clear face shape. Ve loved it, but it didn’t translate to the camera, so it didn’t look like a face to us. As I previously said, being transparent left us seeing the bodysuit under the helmet rather than the face he created for the patients to interact with. It was a better concept than the execution IMO.
April 8, 2014
Looks like my tastes are 180° from the judges.
Niko (Aswan) - It looked creepy and disgusting (in a good way) to me. The judges went on about it looking like a cartoon-y and comical tongue, but I liked the shape and color. One of them criticized it for just hanging there, but with it so big and long, what else could it do?
The tail was stupid though. Early on when he mentioned his Aswan breathing under water, all he had to do was add gills. So simple, and the would have been better than the tail.
It was a bottom look for the judges, but the second best look for me.
George (Yara Ma Yha Who) - Not bad, except for the fingers and to me the body was boring, yet the judges gushed on and on about it. Also, after taking off the fingers and sash to improve the creature my wife noticed how it must have been nice for George, but what about the other contestants? Why not let them make modifications during judging?
The judges loved this look, but it was my bottom look.
Rashad (Jiang Shi) - I liked the face but was disappointed in the chest piece.
The judges made it the winning look but it was third place to me.
Tyler (Sasabonsam) - Except for the fake arms and hands I liked it the best. Yeah, the body could have been better, but the face and wings allowed me to ignore all that. It just didn’t bother me as much as it bothered the judges.
And it’s funny, but it seemed to me that the extra abilities part of the challenge seemed to be not that important to both the designers and judges.
Nobody really won this one to me.
I agree with you, I liked Tyler’s a lot more than the judges. Though I do understand their complaints about the body mushiness, and I don’t think the wings came out very good even with the redirection. He just bit off too much, but I still thought the head and back and shoulders were all awesome, I thought the miniarms worked well, the chest was mushed and amorphous.
I liked Rashaad’s face, but agree with the judges he covered up some of the best selling points by hiding the ears, and he should have distressed the hair like a zombie corpse rather than leaving it neat like an elf. Still, it was solid work.
George’s head and shoulders were pretty good. The face and head all worked very well. But “surrounded by a buffet of bad decisions” is right. I hated the shoulder sucker things almost as bad as the fingers, and they said nothing about those. The fingers were a mistake, it is hard to oversize just the fingers and not address the hands as a whole. The sash was goofy. Yes, it had a lot of problems, but the head and face were pretty awesome and without the fingers and sash, it did have a lot to say.
Niko’s was definitely creepy and disgusting. The tail was a joke, worse than George’s fingers, but easier to ignore. The tongue being limp could have been addressed by using an internal wire framework, if you weren’t going to go Roy level of articulation and fabrication. I didn’t hate it as much as the judges. They did actually give some good remarks about the forms of placement of anatomy of the face that opened, shape of head, and techniques to make the model able to wear it and breath. Those didn’t make it to the interview, but were mentioned in the close-up inspection.
This is an odd one. I’d have had a hard call for worst, and picked Niko on overall consistency. Everybody had some good work and some bad decisions. I think George’s was probably the most bad decisions compared to good ones, but I like his visions better than Niko’s and his quality of work is consistently better. Niko just lacks polish and finesse.
But we don’t get an elimination this week, we get a second half to the challenge for next week. Okay, let’s see what happens.
I agreed with the judges that Rashaad was the clear winner. Overall, I liked it. BUT. BUT. I could not believe that no one, especially the judges, mentioned that earlier in the season, Chloe did a (terrible) Venus Fly Trap mouth design. I thought that was a choice that was going to get him slammed. Plus, venus fly traps aren’t Chinese (they’re native to North America). I don’t know why that bothers me so much, but it just doesn’t FIT with the story of the Chinese vampire.
I couldn’t believe George was considered a top look. Yes, I liked the head, but the fingers were too stupid to be believed, and in the past, I feel like it’s been clear on the show that the judges are looking for a total design, not picking and choosing elements. I was disappointed that they were so quick to overlook the fingers, especially as that was the single key element of that vampire legend that George was supposed to show.
Tyler’s I thought was better than the judges seemed to think. It wasn’t his best, that’s for sure, but I didn’t think it was a total mess. Although at this point in the competition, obviously, “not a total mess” isn’t really good enough. However, it was not in the same category of bad as …
Niko’s … which was just not coming together AT ALL. The tongue was too blobby – it looked like it might lick its victims to death. The paint was too simple (and not even well done) for an otherwise simple design. I didn’t get the tail at all. He seemed completely perplexed by the “adding a new abiity” part.
I agree with the judges on Tyler’s design. The proportions were way off, it was muddy looking and it from the neck down it was a disaster. I liked Niko’s, however, I wish he could’ve done something for the tongue that didn’t make it look so useless. I don’t know what he could’ve done and maybe there was nothing. I mean the tongue itself looked pretty good to me, but it also seemed awkward. I don’t think they really considered George a top look so much as they just decided to pick two top and two bottom. The fingers were awful…awful…awful. But the rest of it was pretty good. Rasaad was clearly the best. The way the actor could emote through the mask was fantastic and it was a stellar paint and sculpt. Having said that, I don’t think it was great either, just the best of the four. I find it strange that what I consider a fairly pedestrian challenge turned out such mediocre work.
For Niko’s, I was thinking maybe the tongue didn’t have to be THAT big. Even a 12" tongue is a long tongue, you know? Possibly something thin and serpentine.
Werewolf challenge.
Looks like I was pretty much on the same page as the judges, at least as to who won and who isn’t going to the finale.
My ranking of looks, and why:
George - The orange paint on his chest looked just like that, orange paint. It didn’t look natural, but I loved everything else about his look and over-all I thought it was fantastic.
Rashaad - The golden parts didn’t look organic, but I liked that Rashaad attempted to make his warewolf look interesting.
Tyler - His warewolf looked very realistic, but too plain to me. I’m probably being silly, but I was hoping for the artistic equivalent of bells and whistles, if you know what I mean.
Niko - I couldn’t get past his fake looking face…and that of the warewolf’s, BOO-YA!
OK, seriously, his warewolf’s face was so bad I can’t comment on the body, because I couldn’t get past his face.
OMG, WTF is that thing? Werewolf? No way. I swear, it looks like a fish or a frog or something. Just stunningly bizarre and bad.
And how the judges are falling all over themselves to find a way to say good things about that piece of crap. They’re polishing the hell out of that turd.
The concept of the removable spikes might or might not be okay, but the execution was dreadful. The coloration is awful. The ears were bad.
George was scrambling at the end for the paint job, and with another half hour he probably would have fixed the front to be as good as the rest. There certainly were a lot of good elements in this, and his matchup to his vampire was the best, so on those grounds he was the winner.
I really liked Tyler’s. As they said, it is the only one that really said werewolf. I think the only reason he didn’t win was the problems with his vampire. Basically, he couldn’t go fix last week’s problems. I would rank Tyler’s as best on the werewolf alone, but second to George because of the tie in to the vampire.
Oh, and that was pretty unusual, for the Westmores to come back and give a second round of advice to Tyler. Yes, Mr Westmore gave everyone good advice. That extra visit was a confidence booster that Tyler needed at the right time, and helped him regain his footing for this challenge.
Overall, Rashaad’s was pretty good, but the gold elements were hard to read, and didn’t feel organic. The chest paint job looked unfinished being plain white. And yes, he did look kinda scrawny.
But it really was no contest who was getting eliminated this week. I mean, come on!
And I just realized I typed warewolf over and over again instead of werewolf. Well, don’t I feel pretty stupid. :smack:
Well that was a no-brainer. Niko is kind of lucky he made it this far to be honest, but that “werewolf” just looked horrible. I liked Tyler’s but there was zero originality in it, it was about as generic a werewolf as you could make. Also, maybe I am wrong but hasn’t he done mid-transformation like three times before. Rashaad’s was interesting I thought, but the face seemed far more cat-like to me. And I agree that he didn’t look particularly tough. George’s was the best and most consistent with the vampire. The sculpt, especially around the shoulders and neck was really nice, and the coloring was good from the shoulders up.
Right now, it is hard to pick a favorite, because they all have the ability to be really good and they also have the ability to be bad. If I had to rank them it would be Tyler, George, Rashaad, but that is a pretty pliable ranking.