SyFy channel has been trying to capitalize on their “Face Off” show for some time, playing around with other concepts for shows. There was a competition show where the competitors built movie/commercial sets. There was a show where cosplayers were going around to national conventions and competing in the various cosplay contests. They had one with someone competing for a slot at Jim Henson studios. They tried one where cosplayers come to the lab and compete on cosplay design to themes. They ran a show on a body painting shop out of Las Vegas that was about their jobs, not a competition. They floated one with three Face Off vets working in a shop together, but it only aired one episode. Nothing has really picked up yet, though I’m hopeful Cosplay Melee will.
Their latest foray into the ideasphere is a new “Face Off” spinoff, “Face Off: Game Face”. The concept for the show is a bit different of a format than the current show - instead of a season of competitors getting eliminated 1 by 1, each episode will have 4 Face Off veterans competing in 3 rounds to win $10,000 in prize money. This show is also hosted by McKenzie Westmore. It appears the judges will be different each week.
For those of you “Face Off” fans who have been missing the Foundation Challenges they used to do, this show is for you. Essentially the competitors run 3 rounds of Foundation Challenges, with one competitor eliminated each round. They use the make up shop with pre-fab appliances and costume pieces to whip something together in a couple hours.
The first episode ran this week. The competitors for this episode are Faina, Roy Wooley, George Schminky, and Jasmine Ringo. I recognize all four of them, though Faina is from the just finished season and Roy has been on several times.
Judges tonight: Ve Neill, Eryn Krueger Mekash, and Rick Baker.
Round 1: 90 minutes to take a pair of prosthetic ears and use it to inspire a Fantasy character. They pick one of four boxes without seeing what is inside. The models are apparently also assigned, so their character’s sex is largely preset for them.
Jasmine: Her ears are round with long wiggly pointy ears running back and up. They are very textured. Her model has a very pretty smooth face, so Jasmine has to find a way to make the texture of the ears blend into the model’s face. She thinks of some sort of forest queen. She finds a small chin appliance that gives some texture to the chin, and then gets to work on painting. She is using a lot fewer prosthetics than the others, and wonders if that will hamper her, but it’s too late to change directions. Then she finds a great animal headdress, and uses that with a blond wig. However, she has to fight to get the headdress where it doesn’t cover the ears but the hair frames in a more natural way.
George: His ears are a bit large and have points, kind of like oversized Vulcan ears. George selects a forehead prosthetic that has some smooth ornamental lines, and he conceives of his character as some sort of warrior. Vague much. He runs a bald cap, the ears, and the forehead piece. Looking just at the forms, I think his forehead piece works well with his ear shape. He has some struggles with keeping the ears attached, and so that eats a little of his time. When he gets to painting, he decides to use an undercoat on the appliances to get closer to the model’s skin tone - but he uses a much darker brown. Then he goes back over that and the face with a silver color. He leaves the head bald and has no other adornments.
Roy: His ears are two long pointy triangles. He says, “We have 90 minutes - you’ve got to be kidding me. That’s not the way we do it on Face Off.” Well, technically, it is one way a number of competitors did it, but they quit doing it before your first season. Roy’s ears make him think of a troll, and he decides he needs to build up the model’s head to match the proportion of the ears. He applies one bald cap, then cuts some batting to create a padding layer and cover that with another bald cap. After he gets the ears on, he goes and finds a bulbous nose. Then he sees a line on the forehead and finds some cheek pieces to apply above the eyes to cover that texture. He is working fast, but he almost places the pieces too low on the eye where they keep the eyelid from opening. He starts fighting with his edges, and finds himself down to only 30 minutes and he still hasn’t applied any paint. It’s going to be a quick exit if he can’t get moving. So he pulls out a firehose of an air brush to start painting in big swathes. Everyone calls it a car paintbrush. Surprisingly, the paint coverage comes pretty fast, and his is starting to look pretty good.
Faina: Her ears are very different, being all round edges, sort of like two seashells. Her immediate response is that she thinks of somewhat dark or evil characters, and she really needs pointy ones, but she got the only pair that isn’t pointy. My first thought is Bashful the Dwarf. She comes up with a princess of the forest that protects animals. She grabs a forehead and some cheek pieces and gets to work on applying. As she starts painting, she has some bad edges, and she normally does really good on edges, so that bugs her. She feels disorganized and scrambling every which way.
Round 1 Judging:
Jasmine, Forest Queen: She located some brown dress that has some layers but looks vaguely foresty if plastic. She also has black contacts to make the eyes dark. I like what she’s done with the paint, having highlights for the nose and lips and ridges on the chin while using darker shades to blend to the ears. Her ears are a little difficult to see, lost in the sea of hair and headdress, and this challenge is about the ears, but she does look like a whole character and does look complete. On close up from the side, the ears are more visible. The wrinkly texture of the ears might have worked better on a goblin or a witch or something rather than with a pretty face. However, she used her time well and did not bite off too many prosthetics, choosing to focus on paint instead, and I think it pays off. Eryn thinks the chin looks tribal and the highlighted bumps terrific. Ve likes the subtlety of the color and a clean look. Rick likes the contrast of the black eyes to the light face. Ve cautions Jasmine not to rely too heavily on costume and headdress to hide the make up on future challenges.
George, Warrior: He’s located some fantasy clothing, but it reads more like a village shop keeper than a Warrior. Even more bothersome to me, he’s painted the head silver with some pink tinge to the head but the cheeks are darker. And at first look I’m not seeing any real definition. He has a great texture on his forehead but it is largely washed out by the monochrome paint job. In close up I can see how he tried to enhance the lines with some pinks, and the color actually has a lot of break up to it. I just feel his character feels more alien than fantasy. Kinda like a big-eared Klingon. Rick likes the mottling on the top of the head but feels it should have carried down into the face more. And Ve notices the ears have a bit of an application issue. This seems to miss for me, both the Fantasy element and the Warrior element that he stated.
Roy, Troll: He dug up a costume that fits, but the beauty is in the face. He’s applied the ears so they jut straight out to the sides, and then given his character an appropriate nose, arches above the eyes, and an enlarged head that has a nice shape to it. Colorwise, he’s come in with green for the main skin tone, but highlights of pinkish skin on the nose, above the eyes, and inside the ears. Given how far behind he was, this is impressive. What’s astounding is how complete the paint job feels. He even has speckling to break it up. Eryn thinks the head shape is exceptional and is going to file that trick away for her own use. He does have some bad edges around the eyes. It’s still pretty remarkable. His character looks like a big dopey troll, not a scary one.
Faina, Forest Princess: She’s pulled together a pretty blue dress with blond hair and then added the right dimpled cheeks and forehead ridges to fit the ears and give her a different than human look. I think that concept and the pieces used work well together. However, the coloring on her face is a bit haphazard. She’s got some opalescent pink highlights and some darker dones around the eyes and mouth, but it feels a little rough. Ve says it looks overpainted, and she put the opalescent paint on the nose tip and it exposes an edge on the prosthetic that could have been hidden better without that highlight.
First elimination: Faina. I would have bumped George, because Faina’s fit the concept and George’s didn’t, plus I didn’t like the result - his color choices, his lack of distance read. They felt Faina’s paint was a bit haphazard and overdone and she needed cleaner edges.
Round 2: 2 hours to take a specific location and use it to inspire a creepy horror character. They each pull a post card from a mailbox to get their location.
Jasmine, Catacombs: Dark underground with bones, so she starts thinking zombie. Pale and dirty. She digs up an eye prosthetic to make the eyes more sunken and the face more emaciated. She does a bald cap and the eyes, and then she pulls some silicone fins that she decides to apply to the model’s collarbones. She has a burn on one side of his face. She gets some fleshy tones to base him out with an uneven color since he’s walking the catacombs, and should be dirty. She removes the model’s shirt and bases his torso and arms out as well. Then she starts using some filthy green to start coloring over the paleness. She gives him prosthetic upper teeth, but can’t get the lower teeth to stay painted.
Roy, Padded Room: Roy’s location is a padded room from an insane asylum, so Roy naturally thinks of … a fish person. 
His character is the doctor who is transforming into an aquatic creature. WTF? But he is determined. His model is a guy with long hair, so of course he puts it into a bald cap. Rick states that he always tries to go out of his way to avoid caps. Ve comments that he could have just used the hair and made it dirty and stringy and he would have the great beginnings of a character - kinda like the patient from the last season Face Off finale. Anyway, Roy starts fabricating in earnest, gluing some large fish eyes on foam to attach with an appliance. His character has a split down the middle of the face, and he uses a second appliance cut up to help with the broad edges from the first piece he cut. Then he adds silicone tentacles from the chin. His piece has some big edges and is using a lot of pieces. He starts his paint going for some Caucasian human flesh tones. He puts some additional gills behind the fish eyes to cover some of those edges. Then he pulls out a wig and applies it and slimes it up. Then he places some mesh in the middle opening to cover the model’s face.
George, Sewers: His is a creature from the sewers, so he also is going fishy. He shops for a forehead prosthetic but can’t decide what he wants. He gets a forehead applied, then is looking at a chin piece that he decides not to use and has to go get another prosthetic. He finds a face with scales like a crocodile, and I think he then removes the original forehead to apply this new face. He adds some gills he applies to her neck. He starts painting in a deep red color. Then he comes back with a bright white to give highlights, but he pretty much overcoats the whole face, with just the crevices retaining the red.
Round 2 Judging:
Jasmine, zombie from the catacombs: Overall she has a good look going. Her model is thin and helps with the emaciated concept she wanted. The body has some good uneven dirty tinges and some dripped elements like water running and smearing dirt. The forehead is great with a sick green with a lot of breakup. The burn side of the face is pink and sore looking. What I don’t understand is the black she has around the guy’s mouth and on his chin. I don’t know what that is supposed to be. Ve asks why she applied fins to the collarbones, and she says that she wanted to break up the profile without changing him totally from a human form. Rick says she could have saved some time and got a more organic look by using some watery paint and letting it run down instead of spraying the lines in, but he likes it.
Roy, doctor fish from padded room: This one makes as much sense as it sounds like. He has his character in a dirty doctor’s coat. The doctor has black hair, and then a fish face with an open mouth down the center of the face and tentacles on the chin. Rick asks him how his background and his postcard made him do this. Roy says since he got the padded cell, he could put any kind of creature he wanted to in it, so he just wanted to have some fun with it. Okay, no, I disagree that you could slap any old creature in a padded cell. Ve asked him how many things he cut up to make it, and he says about seven pieces. That’s at least interesting, that he modified that many elements to create something original and new. Rick says he appreciates that it wasn’t just a piece out of a box, rather it was original.
George, fish lady from the sewers: The hair and costuming are all on point. He had some excellent prosthetics in the scaled face and the gills on the throat. But her skin is white with some pink around the eyes. He could have done a lot of alligator colors, could have done fish scales, but he has this base white. Ve says she wishes she could see more of the darker undercolor in the final result. Rick mentions the hands are a very different color than the face. The gills look nice and the reds inside the gills works well. Again, it feels to monochrome to me, even though I can tell it isn’t monochrome. It just reads as white.
Second elimination: George. They felt the make up was heavy handed and lost detail and his time management was off. This is a difficult call, because I think Roy was way off base for the point of the challenge, but his result was more creative and interesting. He had some edges that needed more work, but George had that great face and the gills, and didn’t do anything with them. I guess that works for me.
Round 3: 2 hours to take everyday electronic parts and incorporate them to make a Star Trek Borg character.
Jasmine: She finds a shiny brassy piece that looks pretty cool, and she gathers some other odd and ends. Her model is a black guy, and he has some small braids around his head. She decides to keep them and pin them back and use them in the make up. Hopefully that saves time. She wants to make some sort of glass or plastic apparatus, so she takes the face cast and uses the vacu-form machine to create a plastic sheet with the actor’s real face contours. Then she starts cutting out the piece she wants. She finds a biotech eye prosthetic that looks a bit cliché (like Roy’s isn’t?), but she plans to make the paint distinctive. Then she sees some plastic tubes, and they contour in curves over his head, and she fills them with colored water and LED’s at the end so they look like they have something pumping through them. She decides to add some thin straight lines to serve like wire traces, but she struggles to keep them thin and straight.
Roy: He starts collecting parts, but is gathering several plastic tubes. He runs back to the prosthetics and sees a premade cowl that he thinks will be perfect for a Borg. That should save some work. His model is female, but with the cowl he doesn’t even need a bald cap. He decides that he wants to get a decent paint job going before he begins his fab work, since that has been what he’s struggled to have time to do. He bases her out in a pale color, then goes in with bright blue to make veining and some stencil marks to break it up. Next he applies the eye appliance, and then starts work on fabricating a helmet. He makes a tape and foil head mold to cut up into a template so he can cut L-200 shapes to glue together. He rigs a light to hang over one of the eyes, but he struggles to get it attached. He’s spending a lot of time on building and not enough on painting things. He starts rigging up the tubing to wrap around the head, then realizes he hasn’t painted her hands, so he races to do something with them.
Round 3 Judging:
Jasmine: She’s located some spacey jump suit thing that works okay. It’s not Borg black, but it looks good enough for the concept. As for the fab work, she has a tube running out of one nostril, the eye prosthetic is painted to highlight the circuit chips and some brassy colors, and she has several items attached to the plastic shield. That distinctive piece she found at the beginning she has attached in a cool way to wrap around one ear. She has done some texturing around the eye that isn’t prosthetic to look burned, and the color choices work well. Ve likes the color choices, but some of the bits and pieces look decorative and not purposeful. Rick asks about the lines on his face, and compliments the color choice.
Roy: He has located some space age armor that looks really cool. The torso is silver and form fitted, and the sleeves are black with big shoulder covers. The pants are some shiny tights that fit the theme, so the overall appearance is pretty good. But those were found elements, not stuff that he created. In contrast, the hands have distinct lines where the cuffs were that leave some skin unpainted, and the helmet is unpainted L-200 with rough edges, so it looks like foam. And there is a strip of crumpled aluminum foil down the middle of the helmet. The face paint job has some cool mottling, but the stencil work seems purposeless, which Ve points out. Ve says he shouldn’t have spent as much time on the fabricating and more on the paint.
Winner: Jasmine. Her character color choices are good and the colors stand out better, and the pieces she used in a good way. Her fabrication looks clean, though there are some bits that don’t look purposeful. She also had more consistent results for all three challenges. In contrast, Roy spent a lot of time on a helmet that still looked like crap, and his did not have any color in the pieces or the prosthetic, other than one blue light, and his paint job was not clear. And he had that fish thing.