Face Off – Make it Reign
Face Off has returned with 14 new contestants showing off their makeup and creature design skills for a panel of Hollywood veterans. This week, it’s goblin kings all the way down.
The contestants meet up and dive right into the foundation challenge, which offers immunity from elimination as the top prize. Offered a selection of crowns, they have to create queens to go with them. There were some very beautiful pieces, but Anthony’s stood out with a prosthetic smoothly blended into the design of his alien queen. A lot of the contestants appeared to just do beauty makeups, and not terribly good ones at that. I hate to come right out taking cheap shots, but there was some seriously weak karate going on.
(To get this out of the way, let me be clear in saying I’m comparing the contestants to each other. They all do amazing work given the constraints of the show. I personally couldn’t put makeup on Robert Smith, and I can’t sculpt a snowball).
The highlight of the foundation challenge was learning that McKenzie’s dad, makeup luminary Michael Westmore, would not only be judging that challenge, but he’ll be acting as a mentor to the contestants all season long. That’s awesome, and his wisdom was immediately apparent this week, as he offered some very constructive, practical suggestions to everyone to make their designs work better.
On to the main challenge – create a goblin king inspired by the geographical area over which he rules (every single team made a male goblin king, incidentally, though it’s possible they were only offered male models). The 14 were divided randomly into teams of two and the work began.
I was waiting for our first instance of mold drama this season, but we actually had pre-mold drama, as Anthony broke his model’s lifecast. His partner Meagan was all, “Crap, he’s got immunity, I’m doomed,” but Anthony just resculpted the dude’s nose in like five minutes.
As Autumn and Eric started working on their jungle king, they showed all the signs of being a train wreck. Autumn bossed Eric around terribly, flipped out over a bald cap, and seemed generally rather unpleasant to work with/around.
Michael Westmore came around to do the mentor thing (and hearing McKenzie say, “Hey dad,” will never get old). “Put some coat hangers in there; add some fish scale to your silicone; make sure you don’t lose details when you paint this.” I think everyone on the show should call him dad. Thanks dad!
Oh, by the way, Wayne’s nickname is Beefcake and he runs around in soft focus slow motion. That’s a true fact. TV told me so.
Anyway, on to the final results. McKenzie continues to love assymetrical dresses, as my wife observed, and Jonathan Rhys-Davies was the guest judge. You’ll never find a more charming man, on Earth nor Middle Earth.
The middle looks were the arctic goblin, whose face looked amazing, but the costume was a bit questionable. On the other hand, David Bowie was a goblin king in tights once. Also the forest goblin, who was solid and had some good detail on the face, but didn’t blow me away.
The top looks were truly impressive. Anthony swept the night by winning with his face sculpt on the mountain goblin, who was in the midst of transforming from an organic being to one made of rock. This was truly an amazing sculpt, but the whole design didn’t feel as complete and fully realized as some of the others, so I was surprised he was ranked number one. I’d have given it to Jenna and Eric for their desert goblin. The skull sculpt really changed the whole shape of the face, the cracked skin with the hieroglyph scar was perfect, and overall it just felt like a cohesive character.
To my great surprise, Autumn and Eric (too many Erics running around) blew me away with their jungle goblin. It completely looked like that guy was actually made out of living wood. And the part where they made Autumn look bitchy when she was correcting Eric’s direction in the striations of the wood “muscles”? Yeah, that turned out to be one of the highlights of their design.
As for bottom looks, Wayne created a highly detailed sculpt for an alligator-inspired goblin, but they left themselves no time to paint, coming closer than anyone I’ve ever seen on this show to simply not getting their design finished. But Michael (whose brother appeared on season two) and Troy made this volcano guy that just…no. I mean striaght up Grumpy Cat, “No.” I hate to be harsh, but that was the worst thing I’ve seen on Face Off. Even JRD was like, “Uh…no.” It looked like someone’s goofy fantasy convention cosplay. I mean, the conehead thing? Dude. Troy got sent off for a deeply uninspired face sculpt, but I honestly think Michael deserved more attention for that “crown.” Seriously, even in their sketch it looked ridiculous.
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Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Tuesday, January 15th, 2013. Filed under Dark TV, Headline.
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Tags: face off, face off season 4, syfy
