If I remember correctly, Dina’s fairy had eyelashes about three inches long. She probably wasn’t blinking, the lids were collapsing under the strain.
Do you have HD? It was really obvious on my set that there was something glued over eyes and cheeks. You’re right, though — without that, it would have looked quite nice.
I was puzzled by what it was supposed to be (a heldover remnant of his magma, changed to green in order to fit the new concept?), and also by the fact that they never showed us anything of him fabricating it. Yes, I know they leave out 8hr 50 min of footage every day. But it would have been nice to hear him say, “I’ve decided to but a green glowstick in her shoulder because….”
One of them — probably this one — was so twisty and swirly that I half-expected Glenn to say, “Just give it a rest, sweetheart.”
Hear! Hear! (Or maybe “Here! Here!” I don’t know.)
I would disagree about that. You’re right that constructing flames is hard, but that’s the low-hanging fruit in the fire concept. It’s like the guy who made his evil clown look like the joker.
Were it me, I’d have spent much less time trying to craft flame and more time making a kick-ass beautiful fairy. I’d have sold the story though paint/color: the head and shoulders in reds and oranges (fire), the torso and top of the thighs in brown (wood) and the legs in green (growth). If you blended all those color transitions right, the judges would be all over it. The rest of the makeup would just need to be good - like the face of the earthquake fairy that the judges raved about. That was only hard to cast in the sense that it was done well, not in terms of technical challenges like spiky flame.
To be honest, I thought the earthquake fairy would be the hardest concept to craft, and his broken shoulder idea was a brilliant way to pull that off.
Just watched it tonight OnDemand. Recording snafu.
I was a little confused by the challenge, but I guess it made sense. They were elemental fairies from the disasters. Except oil spill isn’t a natural disaster. But I guess it’s a disaster to nature. Anyway, they had to make a beautiful fairy spawned by the disaster. Challenge to incorporate the mess into their beauty design. I’d have been lost.
Results:
Cig was the obvious and clear win with his Ice Elemental Fairy. Everything about it was stunning. I’d go so far as to say that was in competition for best makeup this season, against the green goddess from the first episode, and maybe one other by Dina. Pristine, ice cold, all the forms fit, the wings were amazing. It was truly stand out.
Dina had a very good result. The sculpt and beauty parts were excellent and contrasted with the mud and debris. She found a way to do mud and debris without making the face a mess. Chocolate as makeup? Who knew?
George didn’t fuck up this time, dammit. I was so expecting him to screw it up, then he didn’t. I thought the face turned out well, even with the crack, and was pretty while reading fairy. The shoulder design was unique, creative, and well-crafted. I, too, was confused by the green light in it that wasn’t mentioned anywhere. I wouldn’t have put him in Top looks, but certainly Safe on that result. It was a far cry better than his last couple of challenges. And really screwed over the stats.
Drew’s oil spill fairy was lacking something. I can’t quite identify it, but it was just missing something from looking like a fully formed concept. I also had to go back and look at the closeup view of her face, but when I did I could clearly see the edge along the sides of her cheeks especially, and once I saw it, it was there to be seen. Even he knew it.
Side note: the model he used has something about her unmade face that is a little less than beautiful, but with the make up he gave her, she was stunning. Wowza.
Stella: this was just not her week. The idea of flames on top and forest below was intriguing, but her approach was wrong. I think it is very difficult to sculpt flames out of foam and have them read as fire. As Finagle said, fires are dynamic, and having a static foam cast just doesn’t read like fire to me. Looking at the sculpt/paint combo, this was as awkward as the Apollo fire stuff from the other week. They also pointed out transition problems, especially in the chest, and just bad choices in paint job. Also, it really needed wings.
It’s a shame, but I agree Stella’s was the worst this week. Too bad, she was shaping up to be in the finale. Now we have to hope Drew can hold out next week.
I disagree. She was beautiful, aside from that oopsy on the chin. He did a good job of an excellent subtle face appliance that looked real but didn’t look unnecessary. He tweaked the nose, chin, and cheeks to give her a more elfen appearance, to play the fairy look. It worked. Glen said she was the most fairy-like, that was why.
I think she was just playing it cold and aloof. But yeah, Dina’s model was twisting around so much, it was a bit distracting.
What a great episode. Dina’s Mantis was so great. Now that is a talented designer and constructionist.
Cig’s crab Yeti was good. Nothing to criticize, but I felt it could have been better. Although I can’t specifically say what he could have done. Maybe made it look a little more crab like. Come to think of it, he was the only one who got a combination creature. I guess extra points for having to pull of a combined look while everybody else had a single look.
George’s squid. I agree with him going home. For the blue dots looked cartoonish, and I didn’t think his mouth stomach worked.
Drew’s sloth. The black burn marks didn’t really work for me, but the rest of it was fine.
Right? I thought that was odd, what is a “crab yeti”? No one else had a squid sasquatch or a sloth lake monster.
I was also a little confused about the iconic buildings, which seemed not incorporated at all into any of the characters, other than in the backstories … and honestly, you could have interchanged almost any city in most of the stories. I did like how Dina set up the idea of the praying mantis going after more and more mates (to eat their heads) because Paris is a city associated with love and romance, although that’s still pretty subtle.
Overall, I loved her mantis, it was terrific. Based only on this challenge, I thought both George’s squid and Drew’s sloth could have lost, they both seemed too cartoony and kind of rough around the edges to me. But based on overall performance, I’m still surprised George made it as long as he did, and it drove me crazy that he always seemed a few mental steps behind in all the challenges. I don’t think he is good at conceptualizing the finer points of the set ups. Even when he was saying he was so close to winning, all I could think was NO, YOU’RE NOT!
Cig continues to annoy me as a person (I forgot to mention this two weeks ago, but this is how much he annoys me – in one of the first episodes, when they had to create mob characters, he put on this super dumb stereotypical Eye-talian accent when he was describing the make up, which I thought was stupid but at least I could see the connection with the mob … and then in the high school challenge, he used the same accent to talk about his nerdy minotaur. That doesn’t even make sense!), but I grudgingly accept his work is usually among the best. I think the contest is really between him and Dina.
I wasn’t all that impressed with any of the work that week, partly because I think I missed the fact that they were going for a retro-Godzilla man-in-a-rubber-suit aesthetic.
But none of them, I think, really sold the idea of gigantic. The mantis, for example, could have been holding on to a tiny little headless body and, seeing as it was invading Paris, spitting out tiny bits of beret.
I didn’t quite get the leafy bikini that the mantis was wearing. And the back story was incredibly weak. Still, praying mantis for the win, and Dina continues to demonstrate a nice eye for detail.
The yeti-crab was fine, considering the degree of difficulty. The face could have been more crab-like, but really, is there anything more unlikely than a yeti-crab hybrid? The alternating fur and carapace was a nice design – could have used more prominent claws.
I was a bit surprised at the elimination. No question that George’s squid had severe issues from the neck down. But it was fun and the judges seemed to like it and I thought the head was actually quite convincing. On stage it didn’t look anywhere near the disaster that I was expecting after seeing the build. Not to mention that anything with tentacles has just an insane amount of difficulty for a three day build. So it was always going to look a bit hokey.
Meanwhile, Drew’s sloth was kind of “meh”. The face did capture that goofy sloth affability, but the burn makeup (in lieu of hair) was dreadful and the overall degree of difficulty of giant sloth is low.
I suspect Drew won it based on past performance, but I would have given it to George, somewhat to my surprise.
So, the finalists are the two we were expecting (Dina and Cig) and Drew who was essentially competing with Stella for third place up until last week.
Did I mention that the best parts of the episode was the clips of the models sitting in the makeup chairs reading the fake newspapers? “They brought me in for questioning? I’m 3000 feet tall!”
Dina was a clear win with her Mantis. Nobody else was close to the quality, detail, and execution. Her hiding of the eyes was masterful. Her texturing the globe eyes was brilliant. Her claws were well done. The bikini tied in to the camouflage aspect of mantises - they look like leaves and even wear them. I suppose maybe the leaves wouldn’t convey the giant aspect as much, but she had to cover up the body somehow. I loved it, even her choice of model with long thin legs to play to the long thin legs of mantises. Superb and well-won.
Cig’s concept was odd to me. He got a “yeti-crab”, which, by looking at the pictures they showed, is an actual type of crab that has long, hairlike body coverings. Looks like shaggy, so gets the name yeti. He decided to interpret it as a hybrid, and make an actual yeti/crab hybrid. Okay, I guess in a silly SyFy movie of the week way that works. Giving it that Japanese monster movie tie in the judges mention gives more justification. Still, it was his own concept, not what the challenge actually presented.
Anyway, the face and head were pretty good, but when he was making design choices I thought some of them were pretty bad. The face antennae - crabs don’t have antennae like that, look at the picture that we were shown. That’s more insectoid than crablike. And the back carapace, with the layers of shell didn’t feel crablike either. More insectoid. But the overall result tied together better, especially the paint job. Basically the quality of the work overcame other bad design decisions and ended up with a reasonably successful monster make up.
Then we get to Drew. Drew had a decent and original monster - giant giant sloth. He did a very good job shaping the head to give it a slothlike profile, with less of a domed head and wider than tall, and something of a heavy brow. Early on he looked like he was in solid second place, while Cig looked like his was a disaster in the making. But then he had the time issue on laying hair on the hands, and decided to do one side a burn make up. Okay, reasonable way to overcome a challenge he couldn’t beat. But then he opted to remove all the hair he’d layed on the right and do double burns. I thought that was the point his went downhill. “Oh man, I think you just screwed up bigtime.” I didn’t think the hair looked bad, and having some hair helped sell the sloth. But instead we got a totally bald creature with burns all over.
Okay, that in itself was still somewhat successful. You could sell your backstory as showing us the monster later in the movie. But his burn makeup execution was kinda bad. The silicone smear is a nominal technique, but the black everywhere didn’t work, it didn’t look like charred flesh but like it was pasted on, and there was no blending. So that made the burns look extra hokey, and dropped his from second place to fighting for elimination.
Then there was George. I will grant that the head and shoulders sculpt and even paint turned out okay. But the rest of that was a clusterfuck. The judges decided he was going for a retro look, but I think it was just inability to do better. Now he did have a hard challenge - it is very difficult to do fake limbs convincingly, whether it’s arms or tentacles or whatever. So trying to do a squid monster is tough if you’re going for the ten arms. And honestly, they weren’t as bad in final result as they looked earlier, and not as bad as some fake arms/tentacles that have been done before. Still, they weren’t very convincing. But the rest of the body below the shoulders was dreadful. The pantsuit, the cloth of the back so flimsy and floppy, the paint job didn’t look complete on the legs. There wasn’t a good transition from the cowl to the bodysuit.
He says it wasn’t his best work, but how many times can you have your challenge not quite go the way you want before it becomes obvious that is the level of your ability?
Ultimately, they sent him home and kept Drew, which was my preference. But on the quality of this week’s results, I think he had some points that were better than Drew’s, and Glen admitted he was on the fence. I think past performance was the real decision maker here.
I definitely agree the real battle for first and second is coming down to Cig and Dina. Both have excellent records, though Dina actually has a lot more Wins, while Cig has mostly Top Looks, but he has a couple more of those. Drew has a couple of high and low points with a lot of Safes. Of course the winner will be decided by the specifics of the challenge, how they approach it, and who they have assisting them.
His wasn’t technically given as a combined creature, he just interpreted it that way. A yeti-crab is a type of crab. Oh, look, it does have antennae. I was looking at the picture wrong. I guess I have to take back a bit.
Mouth stomach’s are hard. He had to use polyfoam, which is stiff, and that didn’t help. But I didn’t get the black everywhere - ink maybe?
Yeah, but that didn’t bother me, as the cities were backdrops mostly chosen for alliteration.
Minotaur is Greek, not Roman, so yeah, you’re right. But he made it sound like an Italian name “Manny Minotauri”, so there’s that.
I think that’s a fair criticism. They made monsters, but didn’t necessarily sell the “gigantic enough to destroy a city” element. Dina’s was weak with the “eating the heads of her mates” story, because at some point she’s not going to be able to differentiate the heads from the rest of the body, or really care if she’s hungry. Still, that’s a difficult element to think of how to add. Adding victims is one way, I guess.
Well I’ll be darned, my mistake. It’s too late for me to re-evaluate his look, but the challenge is over anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
I had no idea a yeti crab was a thing, either. That seems very esoteric compared to a sloth. Well, you learn something every day.
That is so true.
Having looked at the picture of the yeti-crab, I think it’s just as well that Cig didn’t Google it. Those feathery frond antenna don’t really lend themselves to a macho city-smashing demeanor.
I also didn’t realize the yeti-crab was a real thing, so I was with Cig in his hybrid-creature thinking. But his final design read more “flea” than “crab” to me.
George’s squid wasn’t quite the disaster I anticipated, but the stomach-beak didn’t really work. When he was sculpting it, I thought “If he paints that thing pink, it’s going to look like a giant vagina dentata!”; maybe he realized that as well, and went with the black paint to dodge the snickering.
Well, a pretty good ending to the show. The sword fighting was great and I think that the right person won.
In the competition shows that I watch I’ve been scoring each performance and keeping a cumulative total. Although for this show I’ve only started keeping track since September 30.
Anyway, before the finale I had the finalists ranked Dina, Cig, and Drew.
For the finale itself:
Cig - I wasn’t crazy about the silicone face, even though it did look very realistic.
Dina - Far away I wasn’t crazy about the octopus coming out of the dark knight’s head, but up close I changed my mind. And the starfish on the other knight was crazy good.
Drew - Parts of the armor on the white knight looked kind of cheep and fake, but I thought that just for this challenge he deserved the win because of how, like the judges were saying, his knights looked like part of the same world, yet clearly opposites.
After scoring the final looks and adding them to the cumulative totals I thought the rankings for finalists were Dina, Drew, Cig.
Great show!
When Cig was given Rashad as part of his team, I was thinking “okay, this show is over right now.” I don’t even like Cig, but usually like his work and he is the least likely to make a technical blunder. So, I was very surprised when I was very lukewarm on his team’s result. It’s hard to say exactly why, but it just wasn’t grabbing my interest. And I didn’t think his knights went together at all. And when viewing each knight separately, there wasn’t really anything that stood out as being SPECTACULAR for the finale.
Drew definitely surprised me, because he was the one I thought was coming into the finale a distant third, but his knights were terrific, and as the judges kept saying, they completely and totally could have come from the same world (or the same movie set). I loved how the two different approaches to the antlers actually worked really well together visually. I thought this was by far his best work of the season, so good job stepping it up for the finale!
Dina’s was amazing, and even more so because she has so little experience in the field. Those knights were finished from head to toe. I was a little surprised that the design was so similar to the marine theme she had used for Aphrodite in the Greek gods challenge - I think if she had had some problems with execution, this would have been brought up as a negative. That said, it was so immaculately done overall, it’s hard to question the choice too much. A well-deserved win.
In the past, I’ve been a little meh on when they use actors/dancers whatever and then have a performance in the costumes, because it always feels to me like they drag it out too long. I wasn’t that excited when they announced the characters would then do the battle … but you know, it looked awesome when they were fighting. Much more than I expected.
I was astonished that the makeups held up through that sword fighting, especially given the problems Dina’s team had with adhesives. There was a lot of gymnastics and lying around in the dust that I would have expected to have destroyed the paint and costumes. I would not be totally surprised if there was a little surreptitious behind-the-scenes “last looks” before the close up inspection.
I was not initially struck by any of the designs, but once they went to the closeups, they were much more impressive. I think the judges made the right call, based not only on this week’s designs, but overall.
Cig’s gargoyle knight was fine, although nothing about it particularly said “Death” to me. His “Life” knight just looked like he had a bad sunburn and the baby blue armor did it no favors. Technically excellent, but not visually compelling.
Drew’s forest fauns really were a well-matched set with an excellent implementation, modulo some unconvincing armor in spots. But if I had to do a knight that symbolizes “Death”, I would have gone the whole route and done a death’s head skull with antlers. I think that would have upped the “degree of difficulty” and maybe gotten Drew into the running. As it was, I think his designs were absolutely spot on for forest creature knights, but just very predictable.
Once we got to the close ups, it was very clear that Dina’s concept, as well as her knights, fit the challenge best. She actually had a dead creature reanimated by a well-placed octopi. Her “Death” knight was gorgeous and looked like it was even capable of emoting, if necessary. The “Life” knight wasn’t as classically handsome as it could have been, but the detailing was impressive.
Overall, though, the winners were everyone. The best part of the show was Cig and Drew helping Dina with the molds on Day 2. Staged? Who knows? But that moment, and the attitudes of Drew and Cig after the announcement of the winner, captures why I watch this show. They all want to win, but they’re not willing to trample on their fellow contestants to do it.
When they brought out only three helpers, I was a bit confused. Then Drew picked George, I thought any hope he had was gone. Cig picked Sasha, and Dina got Stella, both excellent sculpters and great for the teamwork.
Then they brought out Rayce, Nicole, and Rashaad. Oh my. Drew got Rayce, and that really upped his game. Cig got Rashaad, and his fabrication and armor skills should have been a great benefit. That put Nicole to round out a lady’s team. Cool.
For the results: Cig’s looked like crap. From afar, the face makeup on the Life knight looks like a bad sunburn. I get there’s skill in the finesse of the application, and the realism works for a certain kind of role, but I’m not sure it sells the Life/Death aspect of the challenge. But ignore the face, the rest of the outfit is horrible. The blue and white filigree is horrible and nonsensical, with floating bits sticking off the shoulders. And it doesn’t tie in colorwise with the rest of the outfit, the chainmail shirt and stuff. Then the cloth wraps are stupid and don’t add anything, but detract from the knight aspect. It’s just crap.
The Death knight was a better job. From afar it doesn’t look bad. The sculpts are good. I thought the metallics on the armor kinda looked muddy and not distinct. And then the green highlights on the face were strange and unexplained. Overall, I think his was the worst of the three.
Drew’s performance was better than I was expecting - largely I think due to Rayce’s contributions in the Death knight. I do agree the stag elements to the face of the Life knight were well done, and the cowl and face on the Death knight were excellent. Those were also the things Rayce sculpted and painted. So a lot of the most praiseworthy elements were not Drew’s contributions. Still, his results did look compatible and from the same world.
Dina was the clear winner to me. I disagree with the judges that this was the closest matchup yet. Dina’s was just head and shoulders above the other two. Her nautical theme was tied together well, and the detail and paintwork were outstanding. The Death knight crab face was some of the best work I’ve ever seen on the show. For something so complex, the actor could still do a lot of movement and expression. The colors were vivid and really looked right. Maybe the Life knight’s face could have been a little more aesthetically pleasing, but she was going for undersea creature and it conveyed that. Everything was spectacular. Even the problem with the edges got covered in a convincing way.
So from this challenge, she was the clear winner, and overall from the season performance, she had the most Wins. Cig had a lot of Top looks, but only a couple outright Wins.
I loved the fight - I’m truly surprised the makeups survived some of those acrobatics.
It’s arguable if his fit better than Dina’s. Yes, his were two sides of the same coin, whereas Dina’s design was two different creature manifestations. But on overall quality and amount of work, Dina’s was just so much better it overwhelms any other considerations, IMO.
I don’t see how you can get there. Cig had far more Top looks than Drew. Drew had a couple wins and so did Cig.
I loved that, too.
He felt he had to do something to cover up the empty space. I think leaving it empty would have been worse.
I had a method of scoring looks based on how much I liked them, not what the judges thought. Before the finale I had Cig ahead of Drew, but after scoring the finale looks and adding them to the totals Drew pulled ahead by one point.
I know, I’m sounding silly, but there it is.
I agree with Irishman — it wasn’t even close. Cig’s was way below what he’s been doing all season. Drew’s was very good, and the judges were right about the two characters fitting together while being opposites.
From a distance, I was underwhelmed by Dina’s, and the fact that it was a turtle’s mouth and not a crab’s didn’t help. But as soon as I saw the first close up, I knew it was over. The insane amount of detailing, all the different colors that made each item stand out and yet brought them all together with a unified palette — outstanding.
I think a much closer result was season 3, when Nicole was up against Laura in their demon/witch duos.