Face Off Season 8

Cafe Society
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My call on Ben is not that he missed the boat in doing a supervillain rather than a superhero, but rather that his overall look came off more zombie than supervillain. However, the skill was superb on what he did, and that made him Safe over Bottom looks.

Emily had a beautiful face but the overall concept wasn’t really Superhero, and the hair was pretty bad. Stephanie lacked direction, did minimal work, and missed the concept somewhat.

I think Darla should have been in Bottom Looks, too, because hers didn’t read as a Superhero, either, and I didn’t think the quality was enough given the screwy concept, but I guess the judges felt differently. I certainly wouldn’t put her quality on a level with Ben’s. Emily’s face was much better.

Ben’s three Bottom Looks are Episode 2, 7, and 9. 2 was the team aliens with the crashlandings and monkey aliens. Not sure what Ben did in that. Episode 7 was the Body Painting where his biggest problem was lack of teamwork. The bodypainting itself could have looked better in the picture with some minor body position changes. I think it wasn’t the right choice to do a blend because he couldn’t control the lighting, and it showed a bit in the background. But mostly it was just an uninspired result from a lack of teamwork. Episode 9 was the alien beauty pageant, and he just went off in a weird direction with lousy work. There wasn’t anything I liked about that design, no quality in any work either.

But then he pulls off the face in this challenge, which even though he missed the mark overall, there was some very good skill shown. And his Wins show great skill. Ep 3 was the Ram/Cactus. Ep 8 was the Clive Barker one.

When he gets with the program, he is creative and very skilled. Even when he bends the challenge a bit, he can rate well - see his Troll that was the swimming girl.

I think he just sometimes is a bit arrogant and thus doesn’t realize that what he wants to do isn’t what the judges want. His creativity sometimes works, and sometimes bombs. He reminds me a bit of that guy from Season 6, Daran, who would make something unique and beautiful like his Japanese anime character, and then do something bizarre and dreadful like his robotic photographer or his silhouette character that was a giant mouth on the back.

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Good point. I most enjoy watching the artists in the lab, sculpting, molding, fabricating; basically, practicing their craft.

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Tonight’s challenge was similar to a challenge from season 3. The contestants were taken to a playground and introduced to imaginative children, and tasked with creating the child’s imaginary friend/monster. They interviewed the child and did some sketches to get ideas down, then went off to the lab to do the work. The children were present for the reveals, and then sent away for the judging portion.

That makes sense. Don’t want the children to think they are being judged, or get upset when the judges get critical of the design that just happened to be their idea.

Anyway, my immediate thought was “Ben is in trouble”. You have to deal with kids. Grumpypus is going to have fun with that.

Some of the kids were less cooperative than others. I liked how Adam steered his kid to naming the creature an then cut down the swath of ideas to something manageable. Lasers from the eyes and all that would be great, but hard to convey and pull off without digging up some laser pointers.

I loved Logan’s look of dismay when he got the cute blond girl whose imaginary friend was a mermaid - a pink mermaid with hearts for scales.

Now the rundown.

Top Looks:

Adam made a giant monster that ate children’s toys called “Lasor”. He used a lot of fun fur and color spray to make the body furry and bright. The real talent was the work he did for the head and torso. He made a giant mouth, using the body for the lower jaw and the upper jaw to the head. I was worried when he was pulling it together on the model and the mouth wasn’t lining up well, but whatever he did worked out because the results on stage worked reasonably well. I still think he didn’t quite mesh the shape of the mouth right, but it did well enough. What pushed this to the Win was how Adam took the plethora of the creative ideas from his kid and then helped the kind downselect to what he could pull off. The head was a creative way to get a large mouth that articulated well. His sculpting was good, but his fabrication for the body was also great - making a harness so the actor could carry the bulk and thinking about how to wear it. And the paint job was great, giving the right texture and look. Well deserved win, and putting him on a roll for success.

Darla was given a princess with a blue diamond shaped head and diamonds and gems, with buttons for eyes. She was sharp enough to know that buttons for eyes would read sinister, but wanted to incorporate them, so creatively made them into glasses, and made them oversized. Brilliant way to incorporate the kid’s desire but keep it from detracting from the overall result. She did a great sculpt and application on the face, with a real sense for symmetry and clean lines. I was a little less impressed with her fabricated gemstones around the shoulders, but overall it was a very solid result that made her child’s eyes light up and really fit the bill. I think she didn’t win only because of the amount of work that Adam had to do for his.

Safe:

Logan once again is Safe. His mermaid had blue coral for skin and a tail that the model could still walk in and captured the blue and pink colors vibrantly. This was a tough call, there were things that I think put his closer to a Top look, but I suppose there were some challenges with the tail. I thought it was creative and a good call by Rayce to have him rework it from his original form.

Emily got Safe, and I’m very happy with that. She was told she had a giant rabbit woman, and she crafted it to be like a doll that was brought to life. She had a very intriguing technique to apply fuzz to the skin to make it soft and furry. I wish the judges had said something about that. The other challenge was she took to heart the comments from Ve about not doing the big overdone hairdos, and so she changed the look to having the ears sculpted back behind the head and put a wig on that was low.

The problem with her design was that the end result wasn’t very pretty - the fur on the face detracted from the beauty, and the eyes were kind of squinty, which made it look a bit sinister. She was supposed to be friendly. The other problem is the laying of hair didn’t really work with the ears, it kind of masked them and made the overall form hard to see. The blank sculpt she was working looked interesting, but it was a bit lost with the final product. She needed to tame the wig and make the ears more prominent.

I was irritated when Ve commented that this was a great spot for one of her big overdone hairdos with the ears up. You specifically told her not to do that any more, and now you’re saying she should have done it? I was worried she was going to get in bottom looks, but I was happy when Glen observed that she was trying to take the advice she was given and make changes, and do something creative and different with the ears. Thanks, Glen. I would have been ticked if that got her booted from the show.

Bottom Looks:

Julian had a kid who watched “The Walking Dead”. He wanted a lifelike half zombie breakdancer, with a mohawk and his bloody heart exposed in his chest. He was pretty certain what he wanted, and Julian worked up a sketch to incorporate those ideas. The only problem is that the challenge was specifically stated to make it whimsical, and Laura was concerned if he went too lifelike and gorey a la Walking Dead, it wouldn’t be “child friendly”. Now we have a real problem, because this particular kid just might be ready for something a little strong that the average kid might not appreciate, or at least the average adult is going too think is too scary. Anyway, he was hosed.

He tried to rethink the idea, make the face more “whimsical” and transform the mohawk into a bone mohawk inexplicably. His result was a mess. The bone mohawk made no sense and had no connection to the human form, so didn’t make sense for a zombie. The face was supposed to have half the face torn off, but it didn’t look very human in form with the chin and jaw. It was just a mess, and unfortunately I think that was due to the directions that Laura and Mr. Westmore gave him. I don’t know how to have rescued the idea to make it zombie and whimsical, but what he did was a disaster. I was sure he should be the one to go home.

Ben’s kid had a lot of ideas that were impractical, and Ben took in everything to the point that the gave himself just too much work to get done. His kid wanted three heads, no legs, a tail, and wings. He wanted one head with a single big eye. Ben decided to go cartoonish, and he sculpted three detailed heads - one for the actor’s face, and two to wear on the actor’s arms. Then he fleshed out the body in funfur, with the actor sitting on his knees to make the short arms and strung out a tail.

Ben just had too much to pull together on application day, and he ended up unfinished, not all the painting done, the texturing not very neat, and just a shoddy result. Actually, one design feature that bugged me was he made the heads on furry arms. I don’t think that was in his original sketch, and it would have been better to extend the shoulders and have the heads on the shoulders together. They still could be puppeted by the hands, but it might have simplified the body design a tad.

Anyway, as much as I disliked Ben, I don’t think he should have gone home over this. He tried to do too much, and the judges penalized him for not knowing his limitations and not helping the child scale the ideas to what could be accomplished in the time given. I guess that’s time management, but it still seems a bit unfair to send him home for not completing something that was exactly what his kid wanted when Julian had such a disaster of his own that was complete but nonsensical and poorly done.

With that, we’re down to 5. And Ben knocked himself out. So… this is really confusing. The stats are hard to pin down.

Strictly by numbers

Logan: 3 Wins, 0 Tops, 7 Safes, 0 Bottoms
Darla: 1 Win, 3 Tops, 5 Safes, 1 Bottom; 1 Foundation Challenge win
Emily: 1 Win, 3 Tops, 4 Safes, 2 Bottoms; 1 Foundation Challenge win
Adam: 1 Win, 3 Tops, 3 Safes, 3 Bottoms; 1 Foundation Challenge win
Julian: 0 Wins, 6 Tops, 2 Safes, 2 Bottoms

Logan is a mystery. If he really gets the challenge, he Wins, but otherwise he struggles just enough to not be inspired to stand out but not enough to be a disaster. And some of the Bottom Looks have been overall reasonably successful results, just hitting a really high performance set of results. Anyway, he has yet to screw up, which just might carry him to the final three. On the other hand, I don’t think that’s going to do it. But the others are fully capable of screwing up and leaving him room to walk into the finals.

Darla has had some good results, and only 1 real mess up. That was the soul stealing banshee that was largely Anthony’s design. And she has a much greater consistency in creativity.

Emily also has a strong record, but is fully capable of missing the mark. She does beautiful paint work, and with the right challenge she’s got a shot, but she’s going to need to hit some new inspirations to stay in this.

Adam, interestingly, has had a fairly week record until the last three shows. He seems to be hitting the groove and dialed in to meeting the challenges. I can’t decide if that’s because the last three challenges have been creatively different than “Demon of the week”, or if he’s going to stay in the groove. Right now, he looks poised to be the spoiler and possibly knock out Emily.

Julian: To me, he’s the underdog here. This is another strange case. He has the best record if you consider just Top Looks vs Bottom Looks, but he doesn’t have a single Win. That’s odd to me that he’s close so often but never the best. But he only has two screw ups to his record. And I’m surprised looking at the numbers, because for some reason he doesn’t stand out to me.

And looking at the numbers, that leaves me another comparison. This was only Julian’s second time with a Bottom look, whereas it was Ben’s fourth. I wonder if that played a role in the judges’ decision on whom to send home. That would make it a little more understandable. Ben had more inspired results, but he also had more screw ups. Julian had more overall Top looks, even if he didn’t have a Win to his name. Hmmm, I’ll accept that analysis, and correct my opinion. I guess the judges didn’t screw this one up after all.

Anyway, I think Emily is going to self-destruct - she just isn’t hitting the mark recently. So I’m guessing Adam, Darla, but who will be the third? Will Logan once again rise above mediocrity to steal a slot? Or will Julian’s consistent great but not superb keep him viable and Logan miss out?

Or will Darla get a challenge she can’t handle (like superhero selfies), or Adam fall off?

The tension builds…

And then there’s always trying to guess who’ll end up on which team, which can dramatically affect the skill set. I fully expect Emily to be involved in one way or another, and that means any challenge with a beauty makeup aspect will put that team in strong competition.

Whereas Ben will be a mixed blessing for any team he might end up on. If he can channel his creativity to support someone else and work with a team, then he could be an asset, but the problem is he hasn’t shown a strong ability to work with others, and I don’t see him bending his ideas to suit someone else’s desires. So I would be hard pressed to pick him for my team.

I think I’d rather have Stephanie or Regina or just about anyone that you can count on to follow directions and rely on knowing what they can do well, without having to clash with personality or have him overextend himself.

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One of the highlights of this weeks show were the cuts from the kids who giggled and looked excited and tickled to death about the characters to Glenn who looked dead inside.

I really liked Adam’s, I wasn’t as impressed with Darla’s as the judges were, but I’m not sure that I thought Emily or Logan’s were better. I would have appreciated a closer look at those.

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I agree – Emily’s rabbit woman just wasn’t cute enough. The flocking was cool, but the net result wasn’t very huggable. “Safe” was the right place for it. It does seem like Emily is getting increasingly fragile – last week’s judging was probably very tough.

Ben’s departure was ironic; all season long he’s been disregarding the challenges and going off and doing his own thing and he gets eliminated the one time that he tries to incorporate everything from the specification. This would have been a good week to go rogue.

I actually thought the break dancing monster was pretty cool; it did fail at actually being a zombie, though. I would have thought that being a kid’s fantasy would have bought you a bit more leniency, but apparently the fabrication/makeup wasn’t that great (although that’s always hard to judge on the TV).

I’d say that Ben’s was the right choice, if only from a failure to manage the client. He should have tried talking the kid out of the “three heads” idea, if only because extra heads almost always fail big time.

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Going in reverse order, starting at the bottom:

Ben: I have been saying all along that I didn’t like Ben and couldn’t wait for him to leave … but I have to admit that SURPRISINGLY he wasn’t acting like a huge jerk about this assignment and seemed genuinely into trying to capture his kid’s ideas. However, I felt his work was clearly in the bottom, and I thought his and Julian’s were equally not-so-good, so I could have seen either one going home.

Julian: I was disappointed in this, I think the idea of a crazy undead b-boy character could be really cute and winsome, but nothing was coming together here.

Safe:

Emily: I agree with Irishman that it was frustrating to have Ve talking about using a giant wig after she was told no more giant wigs! But I think Glenn was right to point out that Emily was really trying to take that advice.

Logan: I thought the final product looked A LOT better than what had been shown in the studio. I’m always surprised when contestants talk about having no experience with traditional or beauty make up. You’d think that people interested in this field AT ALL would make sure they had at least a basic understanding of it. But overall, I liked the mermaid although the tail never quite seemed right.

Top:

Darla: There was just something about this I wasn’t getting … to me, it seemed okay but nothing was saying “Great!” to me. It seemed about the same as Emily or Logan’s, if this had been swapped out with either of those for Safe, I would have been fine with that, too.

Adam: I thought this was really the clear winner, by a wide margin. I was impressed he got the mouth to line up, after it initially seemed like it wasn’t going to work – I wish the show had given us more views of that process. Overall, I really liked his approach to working with the little kid.

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Yes to what has been said.

I also said that if Ben had gone rogue, he would have done better but the one time he doesn’t, it costs him.

Both my wife and I were not happy with Ve’s comments about Emily’s as others have said. We were happy Glenn pointed out what she had been told.

Good analysis, Irishman. I keep wanting to see the score cards or at least have an idea of criteria throughout the show. I, too, wonder if past performance or potential weighs in on their decisions. I also agree that if Ben is back for the finale, he will be picked last, which won’t help his attitude.

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I concurred with everything this week except the choice of which bottom-look to send home.

The hip-hoppin’ zombie wasn’t a zombie and, as Irishman said, a bone mohawk makes no sense. Ben’s only crime was that he ran out of time; Julian’s work didn’t fulfill the requirements of the challenge — it didn’t reflect the kid’s character, and, despite his best efforts, it was still creepy, not whimsical.

I like to think that Ve’s comment was — at least in spirit — prefaced with “Ironically.” As in, “Ironically, this would have been a great time for her to do one of her giant wigs. Too bad we told her not to do that anymore, huh?”

I’m sorry that Emily, like everyone else there, misses her loved ones. I just hope she doesn’t become one of the self-eliminators this show gets every few seasons.

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This is one thing that really confuses me about this show. It’s not Survivor, Outer Mongolia – how come contestants can’t Skype home? Are they sequestered like a jury? Do they not give them dimes for the pay phone? Do the contestants at least get weekends off to hang out in glamorous LA?

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Yeah, I think they are.

In at least some of the seasons, the final three or four have gotten Skype calls from their families one morning, and it’s always been a really big deal, full of tears on both sides of the screen.

That wouldn’t be the case if they’d been chatting on the phone every evening.

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All I can say about Emily is that girl is damn talented. At 18. When they do exposition shots of her, she is always describing a new technique she wants to try. I’ve learned more about the world of make-up design from her than any other contestant this season. And she’s 18.

Can you imagine what we are going to see from this kid when she is Glen’s age?

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And I think the show plays it up when one of the contestants is having a homesick moment. Emily is pretty young, so she might have more of those even if she is talking on the phone with family. And in past seasons, some of the times they have focused on this have been when people missed their small kids – which I think is reasonable, when you have a little kid, Skype isn’t really cutting it.

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We really like this season, it’s not just zombies and aliens and monsters.

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Amen!

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I really loved how excited the kids seemed. They were all pretty enthusiastic with the results, even if it didn’t come out exactly as described. One of the girls in particular was just amazed.

I poked on over to the SyFy page and looked under Photos for this episode. There is the “Gallery”, which shows various shots during the show, and “Spotlight Challenge”, which shows the finished results on the reveal stage. Unfortunately, this set doesn’t show close ups, which sucks. I downloaded Logan’s to my computer to try to zoom, but it still didn’t give much more detail. I also pulled up the “Morphs” for this episode. Unfortunately, it runs as an in browser player (flash?), and trying to pause dims the image and overlays with the play button and some other file icons, so you can’t get a good, long look at the finished product. However, I can make some observations from these three sources.

On the Gallery set, you can see an early shot of Emily’s rabbit from the side. It looks like she’s trying to apply and style the hair. What I see from this angle is the swoop and flow of the ears as they are pulled back, and how she’s trying to lay the wig in on top of the head. The wig needed to press down between and under the ears. She should have sculpted or fabricated them differently so there was gap for the wig to go under. Maybe even sculpt them as separate pieces to be attached after the wig. Or use the technique that Ben demonstrated with his Ram/Cactus this season. Instead, the hair overlays the ears and covers up the interesting elegance of the swoop, making the ears disappear from the front and even from the sides to a degree.

Now look at the face - does it really read as a rabbit? Now look at all the facial hair. While it was an interesting technique, it kinda detracts from the overall appearance. Plus, the eyes come off as squinty. The combined effect is more creepy than friendly.

Looking at Logan’s mermaid, there is some elegance to the forms around the face and on the arms, the shapes of the coral. The bright solid colors works for this look, as Glen observed. From a distance, she looks really good from the waist up. However, looking at the Morphs file, there are some application issues with the face and around the neck, places that aren’t quite smooth.

The tail is also a mixed result. It is fairly creative idea for making a tail that the model can walk in and still try to convey tail the whole time. The heart-shaped scales were as desired by the girl. And this result is more streamlined than his first attempt. But it still is a bit rough in shape and not exactly elegant. Cartoony can work, but it clashes with the top half of the model. Just not a cohesive whole.

Now compare Darla’s. Yes, she had a bit less work, only doing the head and shoulders instead of full body, relying on costuming for the dress. But as a cohesive whole, it works, and all of her design choices complement each other. Take the color palette - the red offsets without clashing with the pale blue diamonds, and then the blond hair accentuates rather than overloads. Red hair would have overloaded, dark hair might have worked, but the blond looks good.

Take the choice of the dress - it’s sparkly to capture the gemstone feel. She has rough diamonds coming out of the chest and shoulders to enhance the gemstone face. The hairdo works to accentuate the diamond shape of the face but still keep her beautiful.

Then look at the face. Neville was very complimentary toward her form language - her choice of the planes and angles in the points on the crown and chin, that aren’t harsh and ugly, but the blend of curves with just a hint of planes for the gemstone feel. And look at the quality of her blendwork around the edges on the face. She has very smooth edges on the cheeks and around the eyes, with maybe a tad bit of roughness right at the lips and a crease down one side from the mouth. Still, it’s far cleaner than Logan’s, and much more elegant and pretty than what Emily did.

I think the judges see a lot in the subtlety of her work as well as her overall cohesive whole and how all the choices work together. She did better than both Emily and Logan, though I might agree that, due to amount as well as quality of work, Adam’s was a notch above. Sometimes they go out of their way to make it sound closer than it is to keep the suspense up. This is arguably one of those situations, though a case could be made that the overall technical merits of Darla’s deserves the recognition and, from a more subtle touch, could earn the win. But I’d side with Adam.

Yes, he was trying to work with his kid, get the ideas and be true to them, and do it without being mean. He was positive about the challenge and his efforts. And for once he was trying to follow the challenge fully, not taking his own weird direction.

Yeah, I get that you’re a guy and so don’t have a lot of experience like girls get growing up and learning to apply makeup to themselves. Nevertheless, beauty make up is one aspect of the field, and it’s a skill set you’re going to need. Want to work in the industry, learn about it. Don’t ignore it because you do “special effects”. It’s not all monsters and demons. Occasionally you get a fairy or an elf or a goddess you have to convey beauty as well as fantasy/SF.

At first, I agreed with you, but on reflection, Ben has more problems than just overloading himself. First off, putting the heads on arms doesn’t match his sketch, though it might have worked easier than trying to build a shoulder piece to incorporate three heads. Second, the texture on especially the main face is rough and reads like paper mache instead of foam. The wings on the head didn’t work out and don’t look like tiny wings. They look like feathers tucked behind his ears or something, like he was going for a Native American eagle feather from the headband but forgot the headband. And the big baggy funfur suit has lots of edges. It does not look like a flowing creature pelt. And the feet aren’t finished - there are visible mold lines around the toes.

He made poor design choices, and time management and decision making are evaluated skills.

As far as why him and not Julian, I think it goes back to overall record. Ben has a couple wins that Julian doesn’t have any, but Julian has far more Top Looks than anyone else, and Ben has been in Bottom Looks several times. I think that has to be taken into consideration.

So, do you keep a guy who can through out a win but also keeps fucking up, or do you keep a guy who hasn’t pulled an individual win but has much more consistent good results? I think the judges picked the latter.

Well, it would be great if she meant it that way, but Glen didn’t think so, either.

Most competition shows sequester the contestants for the whole time as part of protecting the results until they air. I don’t know exactly how they do it, but yes, they do prevent contact between the contestants and their families. That’s why it’s a big deal for the final three to get their video chat before the big finale.

Wait, she’s only 18? Somehow I missed that. Shit, she’s rocking it. Plenty of time to learn how to break habits and get more familiar with how different aesthetics should work. Her skillset is great, it’s her design work that sometimes misses the mark.

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That was a great point about Emily’s ears not being sticking-up enough, it seems like the whole wig + droopy ears could have looked a lot better with just a slight tweak to the design to lift the ears a tiny bit to give the wig somewhere to go on the head.

The other aspect of this is that I imagine if you’re a young kid trying to get into this field, it’s extremely likely that some of your first jobs will be on low-budget stuff, where the makeup team might be TWO people, tops, and they’re expected to handle the monster, and the girl, and the girl’s parents and all sorts of other non-monster characters.

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Depends. Here’s Hilary, an anthro rabbit from the webcomic Sequential Art.

Here’s what Emily created.

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So you show us a webcomic panel where “rabbit” is basically conveyed by ears, then you show us a shot of Emily’s creature where the ears aren’t visible and the face is furry and such, and we’re somehow supposed to get… what?

Here are rabbits. Their faces have big eyes on the sides of the face, the nose is two upward slits and a stripe down toward the mouth. Now look at Emily’s. I suppose the nose is two upward slits and flat kinda like the rabbits, but the effect is thrown off by the mouth and the eyes that are small slits. It’s hard for me to get rabbit from the nose, though I suppose part of that is the inevitable “it’s a human” problem.

Maybe I’d give her more credit if she had Hilary’s boobs.

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Who’s Hilary?

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Perhaps this angle is better?

You asked about the face and I gave an example of an anthro rabbit with a similar facial structure. And comparing what Emily did with an actual rabbit is why I said “depends”. :slight_smile: