These shows are all the same. Someone in Hollywood created a template called “Reality TV” which is anything but. Heck, I could make a show challenging people to make something with Pla-doh under the same conditions. These shows get old real fast. I don’t know what keeps people tuning in again and again.
In this case - I watch because I like seeing the process and the techniques used to make the creatures - it has nothing to do with the ‘game’ or ‘reality’ aspects of it.
I’m still kinda sorta watching this one. It’s just good enough to have on in the background while I sip a beer and play games on my iPhone.
Like simster, I’m interested in the fabrication processes, but find most of the reality/game aspects tedious at best. (Which is perhaps odd, because I love Face Off. There’s just enough difference between the styles of the two shows that one works for me and one doesn’t.)
My wife and I have been watching this. We don’t like the faux drama of it, as everyone else has said, but do like the process and want more insight into that.
I think they only thing I don’t like about the challenge is that they seem to want the contestants to have a LOT of skills in what could easily be a specialized area. Sculpting, painting, foam sculpting, mechanization, creative writing, drawing and probably more I can’t think about. From that standpoint, it seems unfair but maybe that’s where they hope to get their drama?
I didn’t want to comment until I had seen all four that had aired.
The first one I thought it was too bad that they don’t do some thought into how they separated them because it’s obvious that the two guys had talent but not in that area. I wonder if they had put those two on different teams, for more varied skills, if it would have been Russ and Tina that would have lost. In terms of the ideas, though, a very cool challenge to watch and I loved how they presented it to the judges with the soundstage!
The second one we loved because we like the Dark Crystal. Again, Russ and Tina on the same team? Wow. Felt sorry for Ivonne. As was mentioned, we were worried they were going to keep Tina for the drama but was glad to see her go as she didn’t seem to fit with the quick schedule. Loved the other two skekses and the set for this as well.
The third one really seemed to show that Russ was not a team player as he struggled on a team it seemed. Again, a really good idea and all of the designs were mostly good. The time frame again caught all of them. (I wonder how long they get to work and if it’s less than 12? 16? hours I wonder if that’s fair, since for a job they could work longer if needed.) Really thought Russ was going to go and wonder who was going to be out if Josh hadn’t bowed out. And that was really weird! Why did he even enter it if he couldn’t accept the job? Was that not known up front? So, that seemed weird.
The fourth one was a great idea and again loved the presentation of it all. Russ showed that he could work alone the best, although got lucky that the one judge liked his idea as the other two thought it wasn’t enough fantasy. Again, it seemed an unfair challenge in all the things they had to do as two of them struggled with the mechanics and two didn’t do well with back story. I was glad that Melissa wasn’t eliminated but it was very lucky. If Ivonne had finished the painting, it might not have gone against Melissa.
It’s fun to watch the process and what they come up with mainly because it’s so far removed from what I could do.
It seems like a case where he thought he wanted the opportunity, but after getting involved he reassessed what it would mean to move and relocate his family, and reconsidered. Bad place to put yourself, but people do recognized they’ve made poor choices and change their minds.
That must be the explanation, but I am still flabbergasted by his decision. It’s like saying you want to be a surgeon but you don’t like blood. Or you want to be a farmer, but you want to living in the big city. If you want to make it in special effects, how do you not realize that doing a stint in Hollywood is going to be necessary?
Yeah, how does he think he can step up to the big leagues and remain in North Dakota (or wherever)? He wants to make a living in special effects, but doesn’t want to relocate to where there’s an actual industry? 
So last night’s challenge was to design a large creature where the main criteria was how it moved, making it look realistic. The exemplar they demonstrated was a unicorn from Lady GaGa’s show, which looked and moved very much like a real horse.
The additional element was the performance would be under blacklight. They were assigned teams of 2, and given a professional puppeteer to consult with and use in the challenge.
Two of the teams struck on doing bird designs, while the third team decided on a giant dinosaur lizard thing.
The team with Russ went for a bird that was suspended from a backpack frame and cantilevered out front of the puppeteer, so the puppeteer was behind and the creature was hanging forward on lever arms. They put together a lightweight structure and used rods for operating the wings and legs, and then operated the head separately. The head was a hand operation, with opening mouth and blinking eyes. Theirs came out pretty nice looking under the lights, and moved reasonably well, though the feet had some issues. The biggest problem was the feet kinda slid a bit as the guy in the backpack moved forward and the foot operator tried to make the legs move.
The second team was Melissa and Ben. They also had a big bird design, but this one their puppeteer would wear and operate the wings, and then they did the legs and head. The first day was a frustrating experience for Melissa having trouble working with Ben, because he was relying on experience of things he’d done but not communicating it well to her, and not really listening to her. But on the third day, they got their dynamic worked out better, and Melissa found she could communicate better by using drawings and gestures and demonstrations over talking. And then they had an interesting bit. Ben had designed some complicated wings for dramatic movements, but when they had the puppeteer and were practicing, the wings weren’t working well. So they had to go back to the drawing board, and Melissa actually came up with a simple wing concept and managed to convince Ben it would work. So in the end, Melissa built a very good neck and the wing design that worked. Ben made much of the body and legs that moved well. Ben operated the head, the puppeteer the body and wings, and Melissa the legs. Their legs worked best of all three, and they really met the challenge of giving realistic motion. In particular, I liked the quick head bobs that Ben gave it as well.
The third was Lex and the other guy (yeah, I’m lazy). Their dinosaur got to be fairly large, and neither of them were really skilled foam fabricators. The guy started making the head and feet, and sculpted them out of clay to mold, even though the challenge specifically stated that appearance was secondary to movement in this challenge. He was busy making detailed sculpts. That left Lex to do the design on the body, tail, neck, and legs mostly by herself. Day 2 and he jumped in on fabrication, and the shop guru called him on that decision to sculpt on his walk through.
They started facing time issues and found a way to cover it and paint it for blacklight, which was the place to focus their appearance. Under the blacklight, the paint job was pretty nice. The tail was pretty good, with a lot of movement that basically came from swaying the hips of the operator. It was a self-supporting structure with a lot of joints in it. There is a toy snake that is a bunch of segments hinged together, so you wiggle the snake and it wiggles. Their design was like that. However, the legs had problems with sticking out weird, and they did not move well in the joints, and the feet didn’t always land properly. Theirs was the least effective in the motion challenge.
It ended up that Melissa and Ben got the top looks for their overall movement and cohesiveness, and Melissa won the challenge because of her last minute wing design that was one of the most impressive visual elements under blacklight and had all three judges surprised that they were just foam cutouts. So she went from low looks last week to winning this week.
Bottom team was Lex and the other guy for their dinosaur, for the above stated reasons. Because Lex did the leg designs that didn’t work, she was the one eliminated, but I disagree with the judges. I think the guy should have been eliminated. He spent time sculpting details for the head and feet and molding them and running them in foam, when the challenge was not about detailed appearance, it was about motion. That left Lex to pull the designs for the hips by herself as well as most of the structure. If he had spent his time more wisely, he could have helped with some of those design issues. So I think he should have been scrapped for his poor time management decision.
I also really like the judges’ comments. This time they told one team about how to hide things in blacklight. If you have anything that glows that you don’t want to glow, use sunscreen. And then Brian Henson gave a story about working on a Muppets movie. Similarly, Russ was talking about feathers, and Brian mentioned that Big Bird has individually prepared feathers, and that to travel on an airplane they actually have to buy a first class seat for the bag because the suit can’t be compressed. He also explained to Lex that options for constraining the leg motion could have included tying string to the legs to hold them under the operator’s belly. Yeah, all those comments came after the fact, they’re still interesting.
The judges are really good and finding the good in the designs but also noting the problems. And being constructive in their criticisms.
I saw a rerun of the black light episode, and I’m new to this show, this is the only reality show I even would consider watching, not only because I’m a fan of Henson’s works, but because it has Brian Henson, and my favorite Nebari, Gigi “Chiana” Edgely in it, plus the clips of Pilot and Dominar Rygel XVI in the opening credits
That said, I have a question for fans of the show, aside from the opening credits, have there been any Farscape references/inside jokes?
I’d love to see some special guest reviewers from 'scape appear in the show, Wayne Pygram, Virginia Hey, Lani Tupu, heck, bring the Pilot or Rygel animatronics out of mothballs for an episode or two
Imagine Scorpy/Harvey, Crais, or even Pilot or Rygel on,the judge panel…
Heck’ I’d be happy to see Gigi back in her Chiana costume and makeup…
Can I get a Frell Yeah! ?
I went back to the first episode, where everyone is describing their backgrounds, and he was the guy who was doing work for casino stage shows. So I guess he decided to stick with that, instead of moving up to film or television. I imagine there’s some pretty good money in that, particularly given how cheap things are in North Dakota.
Can I say after this last episode - I wish they would give the Judges their own show to just sit and reminisce about the shows they’ve done and creatures they’ve created. I want more time with John Criswell, too, and I want one of his bitchin’ leather aprons. I had no idea about using sunscreen with blacklight paint. I could have used that knowledge 20 years ago.
I like this show enormously but I wish they’d give the designers at least one more day. Even in teams, they need more time to make it all work on the same level that the Face Off competitors do.
Speaking of, I’d really like to see Roy or Rashaad from Face Off competing in this show, too. I know they’re make up guys but they also have mad fabrication skills. I’d like to see what they could bust out.
I hope we get more seasons but I don’t know how many yearly interns the Creature Shop is prepared to absorb.
Oh and I want a black war unicorn, too. Since I’m making a list and all.
This week’s challenge: they were shown a swamp setting and told to design a creature that hides in plain site, then reveals itself to eat the little fuzzball creatures crawling around. They were given one of five setpieces to match their design: rock, tree branch, water lily, weeping willow branch, and grass. They also had to incorporate one mechanism of some sort.
Russ was given the weeping willow branch. His concept was an apelike critter wearing the willow branches. He molded a torso and arms and then flocked them to provide texture, and draped the willow on the creature. However, he chose a very vibrant green paint color and was very monotone with his painting, so the flocked texture wasn’t really visible. His mechanism was he made moveable eyes, and he interestingly went old school with wooden sticks. This gave him a faster design and fabrication (not wrestling with servos) and lots of movement.
Melissa chose the grass. She designed a bird creature that adapted to its environment. Her mechanism was eyes using servos, and spent a day working all that out. It put her behind, but she managed to finish and made some interesting choices by using the grasses like spines from a porcupine kinda thing, sticking up and out and back. Her creature was really invisible when hiding before the reveal. The one complaint the judges had was that the camoflage might have been too good, that after the reveal the face was so hidden it was hard to see the creature. But it had a lot of personality.
Robert had the texture of the Lily pad. He came up with a lily flower eyeball sitting in the middle of the lily pad, then the head under the lily pad with another eye and the mouth. The hand was hidden with another lily pad. It had a good hidden sense and a good reveal with the eye. The details on the body paintjob looked good for hiding in the mud and water. The minor issue of being a little cartoony, but overall the judges were impressed.
Jake chose the wooden branch. His concept was a creature that wandered around the swamp, and as it got old it settled into a position and slowly became part of the surroundings. So his creature was becoming rooted and fixed as part of the three. He had good texture and detailing in his sculpt and paint, but some of his choices weren’t great. His eye and mouth were left very obvious, so not fully camouflaged, and the backstory wasn’t evident in the design, so the lack of motion in the body wasn’t satisfying to the judges.
Ben chose the mossy rock for his camouflage. He decided to make the creature hide inside the rock like a turtle, and then open to reveal a head. The head would then open and a tongue would reach out to grab the prey. He painted up the rock and then made the interior face pink and fleshy. He mechanized the eyes, had a lever to operate the front of the rock opening, and had an arm to reach out as the tongue. The most obvious problem was the tongue didn’t do a good job of masking the shape of the hand, and it was actually fairly obvious on camera as a hand. His second issue was design choice, while the rock camouflage was pretty convincing, the creature inside was comical and cartoony, and the judges it felt more like a creature hiding inside a rock rather than hiding in plain sight. And the shop consultant had mentioned this to him during her walkthrough, but he was too far along in his design process to figure what he could do differently, and was convinced his concept was right.
The judges made Jake safe. They gave positives to Melissa and Robert for her grassbird and his lilypad creature, and the win went to Melissa because of her use of the grasses. She applied them in a pattern that really read like organic for a creature but also made it blend well as a plant.
The bottom two were Russ and Ben. Overall, I think Ben’s was worse this time. The face looked like something from the TV show “Dinosaurs”, and the tongue was unconvincing, and they didn’t feel it met the challenge. But Russ’s creature looked like a creature wearing plants rather than a creature that grew material to look like plants, and the torso was very humanoid but then there was no lower body legs, and the paint was too bright, one-dimensional, and comical. So they opted to eliminate Russ.
I probably would have done the same thing. I think Ben has better potential. He’s done really well so far, this was an uncharacteristic flop for him. Whereas Russ was bottom looks on the first 3 challenges.
The judging on this show is odd – their main complaint with a number of the creatures was that it was “too cartoony”. These are muppets we’re talking about, right? The creators were charged with making, this week, something that blended into a swamp. But there was not, as far as i heard, any requirement that the creatures couldn’t be goofy, cartoonish, or funny.
I'm also sort of annoyed by the usual three day build time limit. Sure, there might be a few occasions where the creature shop has to cobble something together in a complete hurry, but this kind of restriction really cuts down on the cool stuff you can do, as well as the ability to recover from mistakes.
Also, in contrast the contestants, it’s clear to me that I couldn’t cobble together a pipe cleaner sculpture in the time it takes these people to make convincing expressive sculptures with (mostly) working animatronics.
This show is clearly a Face Off spin-off, but I note that there's a slightly sharper bite to the judges and the contestants, in general, don't seem to work and play together quite as well. Just a hint more smack talking and, in the episodes I've seen, not as much "let me help you out with that".That’s why I dumped this show after 2 episodes. It’s not a show about creative people being creative. It’s a COMPETITION with DRAMA. Which is what the networks have decided (probably correctly) that the lowest common denominator (majority of viewers) wants to watch.
You’re right that the time limits cuts down on what can be down and whether someone can recover from mistakes, but I’m not sure this bothers me. To a large extent, it’s that deadline that separates contestants. If you have lots of time, you can fabricate something three ways and then see what works. Under a deadline, you have to rely on your experience and skill to pick the best strategy and do it right.
(In my business of tax accounting, you see the same thing. A new preparer can usually get the right result if they spend tons of time double-checking everything. It’s the guy with thirty years of experience who’s already done everything a million times who can sit down and crank those returns out one after another.)
Definitely agree here, and it’s that small difference that is enough to make Creature Shop far less enjoyable for me. I’m still watching, but I might have it on the background while I pay bills or fold laundry or something. It doesn’t get my full attention.
I did find it interesting that the two bottom looks managed to channel a giant gremlin and Ethyl from Dinosaurs. My wife an I even pegged the face as Ethyl before the judge said anything.
Actually, no. The Creature Shop is a top-tier physical effects house, and (AFAIK) was never involved with the Muppets at all, except in some incidental ways stemming from them both being created by the same guy. The point of the competition is to show that the contestants can create work at the level of a professional special effects artist. The Muppets, for all their other charms, were never exactly special effects extravaganzas. Kermit is a great character, and wonderfully expressive in the hands of a good puppeteer, but from a technical perspective, he’s basically a felt sock with some googly eyes glued on. For a show that’s specifically about the contestant’s technical skills, it’s implicit in the premise that the contestants will need to shoot higher than “Muppet” to succeed.
I also suspect that there’s a certain amount of institutional resentment among Creature Shop employees over people hearing that they work for Jim Henson, and assume it means they’re just making sock puppets all day. So, going for a project that intentionally echoes the Muppets is probably a turn-off for them right from the beginning.
Lastly, of course, the Henson company doesn’t have anything to do with the Muppets anymore. They sold all the rights to that brand to Disney fifteen years ago.
Finally got around to watching this show. I’ve only seen 3 episodes (so I’ve only read through post #19) but I love it!!
I don’t know what it is - I don’t do any of this stuff myself, or cosplay or minis, and I’ve never really been in to too much of the non-Muppet/Sesame Henson stuff, and I’ve never even seen The Dark Crystal - but I am just totally enthralled with the creatures in this show.
I think really it’s because one, everyone is SO talented. I mean, the stuff these people are doing…get out! Nothing so far in the first 3 episodes has looked BAD. Maybe not up to snuff but it’s all 100x better than what I could do. I like the knowledge they have and are gaining about how it works with a performer inside.
I think maybe too that I am such a fan of Henson’s work (yes, even though I haven’t seen much outside of the felt) that I’m just going batty over seeing how it’s done. I’ve been reading his biography and it’s cool to see all this stuff that he is working on in the book still being influential 30-40 years later.
Also just like I love “how it’s done” stuff about magic, and still go nuts for magic, I like to see how Henson puppetry is done. And I still go nuts for it.
Ben was bottom looks (do they use that term on this show?) because the face was too cartoony and because a creature hiding inside a rock isn’t camouflaged. The first one – yeah. But for the second one, there’s an easy fix. After being warned by the shop manager, why didn’t he just stop calling it a rock and start calling it the creature’s shell that’s evolved to look like a rock?
Yeah he actually went through the trouble of painting “mucous membranes” on the inside of the rock, from what I could tell. Maybe I was wrong, maybe the glue he used on the foam was just pink or something. But if he did paint “innards” on the rock, he should have pointed it out.
I think Ben is the most talented of the bunch. He really can do anything with mechs (the junkyard thing was amazing!) and his painting is fantastic. I really liked Ivonne and Lex before, but they lacked in some skill areas and it ended up costing them.
The young guy Jake, I just want to eat him with a spoon! 