I think this is exactly it. Everyone blames poor face paint/application on all the other stuff they had to do, but this challenge highlighted the fact that they just can’t do faces well in this time frame even when they have nothing else to do.
I don’t think the judges explicitly factor in the overall scores, do they? We know that a few occasions, someone has been “saved” because the judges know they can do better, but we’ve also seen plenty of folks sent home who were just having their one bad week and might have won the whole thing if they’d gotten a pass.
I agree with the judges that one of them needed to leave this week, despite past performance. I kind of feel like they picked the wrong one, but it must have been a very close call. They were both train wrecks - no original concept, and poor work from the sculpt through the application and paint.
I don’t think they’re running numbers as a calculation, but I do think they take overall record into consideration. It’s not the only thing, and a clear botch against weak work from the other bottom looks will send you home. Deliberately missing the point of the challenge is a no-no.
Remember, as judges, they are spending a lot more time considering these specific candidates, with a different set of material to ultimately judge. I don’t think they see the lab footage we do, but there is a lot of presentation and discussion we don’t see.
I feel if someone is clearly the worst on a challenge, that’s it for them. But if it’s ambiguous or fairly even bad job, then looking at their overall record becomes a factor to help decide.
"They both botched it, but she has had insightful and novel designs before, while this one has been mediocre at best and is only still here because others have bombed. "
It gets tricky when their record is similar. She had a win, but he had two times in top looks. This one had a win and to bottom looks, that one only one bottom look but one top look. That kind of thing.
Ultimately they are going to have to use their overall impression of each and collectively decide who is stronger and who is weaker.
I’m not saying that this is the reason, but it occurred to me that all of the contestants are going to burn this episode to DVD and save it forever. Not having to watch your make-up person get fired is a tender mercy.
Agreed. This is something I’ve never said in 101 episodes of Face Off, but I could have done a better job than either Meg or Brittany did this week. They both looked as if putty had been troweled onto the model’s face and left unpainted.
So, send Meg home because she had an easier task than Brittany but her makeup looked just as bad, or send Brittany home because hers looked just as bad as Meg’s plus she was stupid for undertaking such a difficult project? The latter, I guess.
Foundation Challenge: create a character inspired by a Rorschach ink blot. Okay. Most of them were fairly obvious with interpreting the blot as a face.
Jasmine sees something “demonic”, but then thinks not scary, so she says a Greek demigod. But the outfit looks more Eqyptian. She does have a very good paint job, though the color choice is odd.
Jordan sees a “massive, stocky character”, so he’s looking at overall profile and not a face, good for that, but then he makes a zombie knight out of that. I guess he had to go somewhere, but I would think the Hulk or Thing or a stone giant would have been more connected to that concept.
Meg saw flairs on the ink blot that looked like a mermaid’s tail, so kudos for looking broadly. “Dirty river mermaid” - hmmm. Okay, what was up with her instructing the model? That was weird. “Go ahead, Meg.” I did like the sponge as head appendage.
Stevie - I don’t get the connection to the blot, it looks more squidish to me, but the design and application are pretty good.
Evan had an undead samurai. Ok. Not fond of much of that.
Ricky had some cattish thing, don’t see any connection to the ink blot.
Ben, I don’t know what it is, but at least he connected patterns in the face paint with the patterns of the ink blot. Nice connection on that.
Nora, again an unclear result.
Libby, again no obvious connection to the ink blot. Maybe the hair and flowers to the loops off the sides.
Scott took it to vampire, which I can see bat and vampire influences in the shapes.
Kevon made some weird plant creature. At least the form resembles the form of his blot. But it’s overly busy.
That leaves Jason, not identified on screen, and whatever he came up with. It’s horns and patterns and color with no concept.
Winner of immunity: Meg. I liked hers best, so good there.
Now the Spotlight challenge: here’s a door, design a doorkeeper and a beast behind the door. Organic way to select the teams.
Jason and Ricky, Mayanish gate. The gatekeeper is some serpentish thing, the beast is a statue brought to life. Going into Last Looks without a single piece painted or applied is a lousy place to be. Jason’s serpent thing is a travesty. I can’t tell if the body is supposed to be scales or rags or what, it doesn’t match the face. As Neville comments, it really doesn’t fit to have human sunken eyes in a reptile face. The feather headdress is ridiculous. What’s that thing around the hips? One of the worst overall results I think I’ve seen on the show. Ricky’s statue brought to life is a bit too intricate. I guess it makes sense that it doesn’t look organic since it is an animated statue, but then the body suit makes no sense. Either the face is flesh/fur like the body or the body should be stone/wood/whatever like the face. Disaster city. Yes, they lost time sculpting, and lost more time with the mold material not drying fast, they still have a lot of design choices that weren’t due to those problems. Bad. The judges agreed, and put them in Bottom looks.
Meg and Libby, stone arch gate. They went alien - very alien. Meg had a decent paint job going but the sculpt was bizarre, with odd shapes that don’t appear to serve any purpose and weirdly placed. Libby mostly suffered from a lack of anatomical knowledge. Plus, she had to rethink items as she went, and that made some of her choices no longer make sense. I do see some elements that aren’t bad, but they’re swallowed by the stuff that doesn’t work. Bottom look.
Ben and Jordan, golden door. They came up with a faun lady guardian and a ram beast. Overall this is a good set, the look good together. However, the lady’s face bothers me. There’s something in the chin area that is poorly applied, and the paint on the lips is poorly done. Otherwise she’s pretty good. The guy, however, is great. A ton of fabrication and everything went together well. The armor is great. The judges love it, Top Looks.
Evan and Stevie, sci fi door. They made an alien woman with some power crystal to control the male prisoner. Stevie’s woman turned out really good. I was worried with the purple, but she layered and blended it really well, and the face is really pretty. Evan’s sculpt is pretty good, but the color choices are extremely garish and unpleasant, and ruin the look. They get Safe, basically for those reasons.
Scott and Kevon, demonic door. I think the demon turned out really well. The face moves well, the horns look great. I’m less thrilled with the guardian, mostly on the choice to scar and burn her. She’s a kind of shaman, and the look works mostly, but that kinda detracted IMO. The judges made them Safe. I would really have liked to hear more of their opinions, but for some reason this one was skipped during the comments section.
Nora and Jasmine, green arch door. Nora’s beast looks great. I like the sculpt, I love the paint job. She got advice from Jasmine and it really worked on the beast. The shapes, the colors, the blending and layering, it’s all perfect. The Guardian, however, is not so good IMO. I don’t like her head so toweringly tall - think Coneheads. I don’t like the bumps and holes on the sides for no sense. I really don’t like the color choices. I don’t like the orange and pinks together, with some blue to make them fit better? The lines are too stark, the colors don’t play nicely, and it just doesn’t work for me. But for some inexplicable reason, the judges love it. Ve, in particular, loves the colors and paint on the Guardian. 
Top Looks.
Top Looks are Nora & Jasmine and Ben & Jordan, with the top team being Ben & Jordan. I can accept that. I think Nora’s was better, but Jordan’s was the best this week and he deserves the win, which he got.
Bottom looks were Jason & Ricky and Meg & Libby. Meg had the immunity, which she needed, though the worst elements of her team were from Libby. While I think Jason and Ricky both had overall worse looking results than Libby, I think this is where her record is against her. Though I notice that Jason also has two prior bottom looks, so hmmm.
It looks like going forward that Meg and Jason are in trouble.
Ben, Jasmine, and Jordan are tied for the lead, with Nora just behind them. Stevie, Scott, Ricky, Evan, and Kevon aren’t doing enough to stand out, with similar records of 1 good result and maybe one bad result apiece.
I appreciate that Glen was very encouraging to Libby while he critiqued her result. “It’s a skill you don’t have yet.” Much appreciated.
Again, I agree with Irishman for the most part.
I do think the inkblot was weird as it was subjective but did agree with the winners for a clean make up. I wanted to see more and was sorry it was so truncated, so hope they have more pics of them online. (Hmm. They have the final makeups but not the inkblot itself? And more to add after looking at them.) I really liked Jasmine’s creation. I liked that he did look sneaky rather than scary but agree that she seemed to mix her mythologies together.
On the spotlight challenge, while I agree that Libby’s wasn’t great, I guess I didn’t see the anatomy problems? I might have to see if those are online as well. (I still don’t see the anatomy problems after looking again.) They also didn’t like Libby’s paint job, so I can see why it was her that was sent home. However. I could almost argue that Jason/Ricky was worse due to the many problems they didn’t overcome. I expected Jason to be the one sent home because of being so incomplete and bad time management? I don’t think his paint job is done but apparently that’s not as bad as muddy. In the end, I can’t argue too much as Libby has only gotten safe or low looks, same for Jason, so I don’t think he will last. I thought Meg’s was fine and, again, didn’t understand the complaints they had about hers, which were too nit picky, imo. I don’t see Meg lasting much longer, either, so it may be moot.
Jasmine seems to be a strong contender for the finale. She’s reminding me of Laura in her strong applications and ideas. I also think Ben and Scott can go the distance based on their records as well. So, again, mostly agreeing with Irishman, just pointing out who stands out to me at the moment.
I really liked Glen’s comment to Libby! I thought that showed why I like Face Off and how encouraging they can be. I also like how the contestants will help each other if they have time. That’s more what I want to see in a reality show.
vislor
I’m always a bit surprised when the judges critique anatomy on mythical or alien creatures. Also, there seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme on Face Off where the partner of the person with immunity gets shafted. My pick for elimination was Jason – Libby’s hyena creature wasn’t great, but at least it didn’t look like a character from a low-rent Sesame Street.
Once again I’m bemused that the contestants can gin up more impressive make-ups and characters in a two hour foundation challenge than they can in a three day spotlight challenge.
Some of the contestants are really starting to hit their stride. Even the safe looks were pretty damned good this week. My only critique is that the creativity factor is a bit lacking – pretty much everyone went with the same hot female guard/male alien prisoner motif. It got a bit repetitious.
I couldn’t believe that Jason didn’t go home. His creature was both ridiculous and poorly executed. The headdress was just… … … I don’t even have words! May be one of the worst things I’ve ever seen on the show. His partner’s face sculpt was pretty decent but the saggy garbage bag of an outfit made no sense at all. It was pretty embarrassing.
The judges seem to be hammering home the point “Don’t plan projects that are beyond your skill/experience level.”
They’re much more forgiving of people who make mistakes on an achievable goal than the ones who make mistakes on something that’s out of their league altogether.
We saw it with last week’s elimination and with this one.
As for anatomy problems: the issue with Libby’s anatomy started at a cheek bone that was really just a cheek ridge going back to the skull. She described it as a boar/hyena/human hybrid, but that cheek feature doesn’t appear on any of them. Likewise, a similar problem with the jaw, where a strange, nonfunctional ridge followed the jaw line. They might have cut her more slack if she’d said it was a demon. I also don’t know if they factored in Westmore’s advice to her early on, when he told her that she was screwing up the anatomy. It’s one thing to screw up on your own and another to ignore the mentor and continue screwing up.
And I think this is where Jason’s snake keeps him safe. Badly painted, ridiculously costumed, mask-like sculpting… but at least you knew what you were looking at.
That’s actually why I thought Jason should have gone home. In the context of Face Off, your main goal is getting something camera ready on schedule. Libby knew her sculpt had issues, but from a pure time management perspective, she also knew that she had to say “screw it, we have to cast this now”. The other team spent two full days working on their sculpts and castings, leaving them no time for a finished product.
In a theater, customers aren’t going to be sitting there thinking “hey, that cheek ridge really can’t support a maxillary tendon for a carnivore”. But confronted with the sheer cheesiness of Jason’s snake, they would fall out of their seats laughing. When confronted with Libby’s monster, the Director of a the film might sigh and make sure the camera guys didn’t zoom in too close, but it wouldn’t out and out ruin the shoot.
I see it, I had the same reaction. The sculpt features don’t make sense and are aesthetically not pleasing. The paint job is good, but not enough to make the work great.
Just because they are alien doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be informed by actual biology. It’s like Pegasus - it has to be magical, because no horse is going to fly with the aerodynamics of wings that small.
It does seem to happen a lot, but I suspect is confirmation bias. Plus, having immunity leads to weird decisions. Way back in season 2, it lead to a strong and opinionated contestant with immunity having a disagreement and basically giving in to all the bad decisions of the partner. It pushes people to take risks, even if they’re not the only one sharing the result. But there have been times the risks paid off, too.
I spotted that, too. But that allows you to try a beauty make up as well as a beast one.
Good point.
No, she tried to take his advice, she just didn’t have good mental references for what she was trying to do. He told her to work on the nose, she ended up giving up on the boar nose. He pointed out 3 or 4 items, and she spent time reworking each of those areas.
No, I agree with Finagle, schedule is more important than finesse, and she made an alien “beast”. One could easily dismiss any connection to specific Terran biology. Whereas the is no good angle or distance for Jason’s.
I honestly didn’t see her’s as that bad. The paint issues were less evident, and the anatomical issues could be glossed over. How do you gloss over anything on Jason’s?
Damn cable box did a system upload on me, reset showed me the preview for next week I was trying to avoid. Bah.
Okay, this week, what an awesome set of challenges! Great idea, for Foundation Challenge and a tie to the Spotlight Challenge. I love it.
Foundation Challenge: use a painted backdrop of an alien landscape to inspire an alien character from shows from the '60s and '70s, like “Lost In Space”, “Buck Rogers”, and of course “Star Trek”. Note no mention of “Doctor Who” - we have some threshhold of quality to meet. 
Anyway, Michael Westmore is the obvious guest judge this week.
Jordan made an orange and purple alien lady with green hair. He’s put a simple appliance on the forehead that he blended very well. Mr. Westmore likes is because she’s done head to toe, and he likes the color palate as authentic for the time period. Plus, it’s well-applied. I’m not as sold on this design. I’m not thrilled with the color mix, though I do like that he’s tied the pattern on the arms to the face.
Jason gave a very bright lady with conical horns on her cheeks, bright yellows and reds. I think the colors aren’t blended well, though the cheek horns are at least a little different.
Nora gives us purple simian Kirk. I agree with Mr. Westmore that, given the complexity of the face and the shading to make the contours work, the green and yellows are overkill. But a cute idea.
Even goes with a blue woman with some big ears and stenciled lines along her face, neck, and hands. I think it’s a very successful makeup, I like the stencil lines as inspiration without being made a part of the backdrop. The purple outfit goes well with the blue skin, offset enough to pop but muted enough not to clash. Very good beauty makeup, very good look, and Mr. Westmore’s top pick. Immunity win.
Stevie has ridged appliances on the cheeks. I’m not thrilled with the look. Not horrible, just not really that grand.
Ben has an orange guy with green lines and shapes drawn on his bald head. He took too literally the idea of matching the backdrop, and the patterns are pretty cheesy. Probably work okay on Buck Rogers, though. Still, he’s not happy with the result, either, so there’s that.
Ricky has an interesting look. His model has odd appliances on the temples, done in white with blue shadows. I actually kinda like this result, though the close up inspection later reveals a little sloppy. Also, the shapes are more nonsensical than meaningful - hey, he grabbed random prosthetics. Still, this to me is an honorable mention.
Kevon wanted to capture some of the shapes of the cliffs in the shapes on the guys’ face, so he has a blocky mess in orange and browns. Not a good result.
Jasmine took oversized playing cards and cut pointy shapes and glued the flat shapes on her model’s face. Then she painted them purples in contrast to the model’s normalish face. WTF? I don’t think even Buck Rogers would have been this silly. No effort to blend the shapes or give them sense. She said something about a cyborg, but those shapes don’t read as machine or purposeful. Maybe Buck Rogers from the black and white days. “Plan 9 From Outer Space” level bad.
Scott - did he even do a makeup? He put some very small appliances around the eyebrows, painted them green, the lips blue, and a white wig. Is there anything coherent there?
Meg, now this one I love. It is a fabulous beauty make up. The blues and white really pop, the veiny appliance around the forehead and cheeks is unique and different. I really love what she did, and wonder why it didn’t rate higher. Maybe because she only got down to the shoulders on the paint, and didn’t complete the arms?
Okay, so the Spotlight Challenge connection is to take their concept and update it to a modern movie interpretation of the same character. Basically, amp up the realism.
Side Note: I learned we have Neville Page to thank for the Klingons of the “Into Darkness” version.
Anyway, very exciting challenge. I love it. They bring out Neville and Ve as well as Mr. Westmore, as all have worked on Star Trek iterations, and they help brainstorm the updates.
Some of the contestants decided it was an opportunity to rethink their concept, flesh it out. Some of that was good, give meaning to their previous choices, finesse the changes to make more sense. But some go a bit further and start veering fairly far from their starting point.
For another celebrity pop, Jonathan Frakes shows up for the early design review to help Mr. Westmore do the mentor phase. He made some great observations, too. You expect them from the pro make up judges, but he had good insight.
His point to Scott about the lips was spot on. Stevie went a very different direction, and he immediately spotted that the lower face needed to be built up to match the rest of the face, or it looked short-jawed. Mr. Westmore didn’t like the human nose, and Jonathan agreed. All of which were important for Stevie, and she took the advice.
His advice to Evan is to make the vents he’s sculpting stand out more.
For the results, they brought in Michael Dorn to guest judge. He would have some insight.
Jordan did not make good decisions. He decided to do a very minimal sculpt for the face to make some of the paint line patterns into 3-D shapes - but very minimal ones. He then decided that since the armor worked so well last time, he would spend all his time building her armor and weapons. Uh, Jordan, while costume and props are a part of an overall character, and sometimes fabrication is the way to make your character, it is overall a make up competition. Spend some time on the actual make up. The end result is more cartoony than desired, and the judges hammer him for his choice to do armor again. Mr. Dorn says it looks like he spent more effort on his Foundation Challenge make up, with tying the patterns on the arms to the face and all. Yikes! Bottom Look.
Ricky took a promising start and fucked it up. His temple pieces became meaningless plastic shapes, exactly the opposite of what Mr. Westmore advised. He said take the design pieces and make them look more like underlying bone structure. Also, for some stupid reason Ricky made her hair into a lopsided curl “icicle” thing that instead looks like a plastic form of a cartoon character. He added unnecessary lines around the chin, and the blues from the paint job, while less stark lines than his prior effort, are still more smears than shading and don’t blend well. It’s rather a mess, which is a pity because I liked the starting point on this one. Fortunately, there’s enough there to keep it out of the bottom, so he’s Safe. God, that plastic hair sucks.
Evan decided to follow the profile shape, but sculpt a big head instead of the hair, and do a bald cap. He does a decent job overall of making it more realistic and believable, a fairly good evolution, while retaining the line but making them texture ridges in the skin. There is a minor application problem around the mouth with some botched edges or something, but overall she’s okay. Safe.
Kevon, OMG, what he fuck is the Burger King mascot doing on the stage? The head is oversized and huge, Neville told him the shapes needed to serve a purpose - we never get to hear his explanation, but they don’t look purposeful. And something happened between the face sculpt that Mr. Westmore and Mr. Frakes admired and this stage, because this looks like a clown. I think it has something in the mouth area, and how it curls up. It looks like a big smiling face. Gah! And then the costume! Wake up with The King! Fortunately, he did update his rather dreadful start, it does resemble an upgrade on the previous design, and there’s some merit in the application and painting, because he gets Safe.
Nora took her updated concept a little too far away from the original concept. Don’t get me wrong, I think the result is actually a very good alien make up, except for the unfortunate cowl detachment that makes it squinch the face a bit. But otherwise, this is a very good looking make up. It just loses just about every connection to the original design. While I get subduing the purple hues, and I can just see similar lines around the mouth area when they do the morph, it loses both the Captain Kirk feel and the simian feel. There doesn’t feel like there’s any connection to the original alien design other than some vague purpleness. Safe.
Jason - GAH! So his concept was to restructure the horns on the cheeks and make them represent the age and caste of his race. Unfortunately, as Glen puts it, he ends up with “a massive collaboration of technical errors”. The jutting upper lip is the least of his problems. The wig looks propped on the head, not organic. Maybe they’re like British courts that use obvious wigs as status signs? The application is rough, the thing with the forehead is … I’m running out of words. He took something that was amusingly campy if needing some slight paint touchups and updated it to a clusterfuck. Bottom Looks and well earned.
Jasmine tried to update her icy cyborg guy by making the flat spikes into 3-D shapes. The overall head shape isn’t bad, but the face has some serious issues, especially projecting the lips. No real good form choices for the face. She took a turd and polished it into a pointy turd. Bottom look.
Ben gave us the biggest turn around of the night. He was the one who started with a turd to polish, but he polished it into a gemstone. He took Neville’s advice about not being so literally tied to the landscape, and so he took the basic lines from his character and turned them into a functional 3-D element on the alien, membranes for filtering air. He gave his character the same lines, just made it read realistic and functional. As commented, he took the best elements and dumped the worst elements. Most importantly, not only is it a good design and a good application and a good paint job, it is probably the most clearly an update of the old design, with clear connections to the original. Watching the morph, the lines just blend into the sculpted shape. Top Look.
Stevie went a long way with her update. She wanted to move away from the mechanical texture apparatus to a more organic shape. She absorbed all the advice and made the required changes to the nose and chin. Then she took a good sculpt and layered over a great paint job. The judges lathered her with praise over that. Her alien looks very realistic. I’m not convinced there’s enough tie together with the old concept, but the judges don’t note that. Top Look.
Meg took her blue veiny goddess and updated it nicely. She molded the textures and ran them up to form dreadlocks. She tied the paint into the whole body. On TV it actually looks really good, surprising since she was behind, had to run polyfoam that morning, and went into last looks without any paint applied. I really think this is a beautiful result, but I guess there were flaws more apparent on inspection that kept it down. Too bad we don’t get any judge comments on this one - I want to hear their thoughts. Safe.
Scott decided to give his character a concept, he made her a water creature from underground caves on a desert world. He took away the hair, gave her an aquatic face shape and ridges on her chest and belly. I’m not as thrilled with this one as the judges. They applaud the beauty and symmetry of the sculpt, and the fabulous full body paint job. While I see that skill, I just don’t like the result for some nebulous reason. Also, they point out this design doesn’t really connect to the old design. Top Look.
Tops: Scott, Ben, and Stevie. Ben wins for both rescuing the turd, and making it connect with the old design while being modern, realistic, and good.
Bottom: Jasmine, Jason, and Jordan. Jordan got close by spending his efforts on the wrong part of the character, but Jason was such a collection of bad choices, and 4 Bottom Looks in a row is enough. Bye bye Jason.
Ben is shaping up to be the strong leader. Jasmine and Jordan both took hits this week.
Stevie is improving, Meg got slammed by time. I think she probably needed to cut her molding shorter and rely more on fabbed dreadlocks, and that hurt her getting her mold done, and it just cascaded through the application. But she still had a very good make up. Scott’s got a slight edge on Stevie and Nora.
I want Meg to stay around.
Irishman, first thanks for the great summaries!
Again, I think you hit all my points. I really loved how they morphed into the foundation challenge and then into the spotlight challenge! That was really well done and helped show off the best and worst, imo.
I was surprised at how poorly Jasmine did, in both. I didn’t like the original and was worried about how she would make it “new.” Not well.
Not surprised about Jason. As was said, multiple bottom looks in a row means they aren’t going to survive.
Ben really did well. I was really impressed and enjoyed the updates. He deserved the win for that turnaround. Definitely a strong contender for the finale.
I agree that while I liked Scott’s first one, I thought it went too far in the updated version, such that I didn’t see the connection between them. I didn’t like it but he must have still done the technical stuff well.
I’m glad Meg and Nora are sticking around. I think, like Jason, Meg needs to work to get out of the bottom. Reminds me of Nicole from season 3 and I would love to see that kind of turn around from her and Nora.
A fun episode and I liked the guests they had! Fun time!
Scott’s problem was that he did so little and didn’t have a concept for his Foundation, so there really was no way to simply update it. He had to create a concept, which drove him away from the original nothing into something. What he ended up with was fairly good, and the skills on display got nods, but there was no tie to the original because the original wasn’t anything to begin with.
Ben had a similar problem, but he had done more with the paint, it just didn’t necessarily feel like something meaningful. He got great advice from Neville to not feel constrained to match the terrain and rethink what he had. He picked the most salient bits and dropped the sillier stuff.
This time Meg’s big failing was time management. She had a great Foundation and a great concept for her change, she just got bogged down in sculpting and the delay was never recoverable. She did amazing things with the time she had for painting, but I think the time management was probably detectable in the results. Her choice of polyfoam instead of latex was likely correctly interpreted as a last minute run over a deliberate choice, and the paint detailing probably had more issues up close. We didn’t get the comments to hear the judge’s impressions.
If she can connect like that going forward but pace herself and judge better how to limit to what she can do in the time she has she has a shot at some good work.
Nora’s got some good skills. The one she tanked was with Meg doing the artist and her artwork.
Agreed, thanks for the excellent summaries. I think maybe three more weeks and I’ll actually start to be able to remember who all the different competitors are. I’m still in the state where the guy who won the foundation challenge was shown on screen and I literally had no idea he was on the show.
(It’s partly because this show has so many competitors who are obviously characters in some way that the more superficially-bland people just blend entirely into the background until something really forces you to notice them.)
Also, his facial hair changed. I got thrown a bit, too, when they jumped between the day of and the interview clips.
I loved this challenge, or the set of challenges – really great idea. BUT I kept thinking that I don’t know if some of these folks are especially thick or what, because I was frustrated that some of them didn’t seem to really get what was supposed to be going on – the aesthetic of the design was supposed to evolve from a 1960s sci fi look (so let’s say campy, stylized, maybe a little mod) to something you would see in a reboot today (more realistic, maybe grittier, more functional). At least two of the contestants talked about “evolution” as if their alien species was evolving in a biological sense. The fact that Stevie missed the boat on this would have knocked her out of top looks for me, even though I think the work on her make up was excellent.
I’ll have to go back and check that.
Stevie didn’t so much evolve hers as reconceptualize it. Several of them had weak or non concepts, so they had to find a way to recover.
Ben did it best by deciding what the markings could be and then chase that idea. Scott created a concept from scratch, which led to a great alien, but little connection to the original.
Stevie was somewhere in between. Her rush job original threw some metallic ridges in the face. Her update was to go for organic ridges and then elaborate, rather than stay with metallic parts. In the process, I felt she also lost connection to the original, but she was effectively saying the original weren’t cyborg parts, the we’re supposed to represent some facial ridges.
The funniest thing about Ben’s, for me, was that his final project actually worked really, really well … but he was one of the people who talked about how changes to the environment led to the changes in his alien. So I ended up feeling that while he successfully created a design that was very visually in keeping with the challenge, it was almost like he ended up there by accident. Scott, I believe, was the other one who seemed to be missing the concept when he spoke about how he came up with his design.
(With the usual caveat that we’re seeing edited stuff on the show, so for all I know, they MIGHT have been talking more about how the design evolution from the 50s/60s to now was critical to their thinking, and we just didn’t see that in the episode.)
I didn’t see him as saying his alien changed in the years between iterations, but rather his alien species had adapted to climate change in some nebulous past. He was giving a purpose and definition to the lines he had drawn on the first round’s head.