Face Off 08×05 – Sounding Off (SPOILERS)

SPOILERS

 

 

We start off this week with a familiar Foundation Challenge – I guess because it’s a ‘Return Of The Champions’ season, we’re seeing things that are similar to past challenges (or they ran out of ideas?).  We’re doing the relay race Foundation Challenge like from Season 2, except you have to choose a prosthetic for the next person on your team so they can add it to the makeup.  Each model also has a set of claws that have to inspire the makeup.  The teams set up like so:

Team Orange – Ben, Darla, Emily (Freddy Kruger-esque Claws)

Team Purple – Anthony, Julian, Regina (Bejeweled Golden Talons)

Team Green – Logan, Stephanie, Jamie (Gears and Wires)

Team Blue – Kelly, Adam, Rob (Glittery Ice Talons)

Logan’s first up at his station, and he immediately things ‘Toy Store Cyborg’, and puts a gear on the dude’s forehead.  Anthony has the golden talons for Team Purple, and wants to go Egyptian Cat Goddess.  Ben gets the Freddy claws, and decides to go with a cut-up face because he’s been cutting himself.  And Kelly is up first with the ice claws, and decides to go for an ice demon with a pointy brow.  On Team Green, Stephanie gets teeth and mechanical stuff for her next piece, so they’re still going in the same direction.  Adam gets a noise for Team Blue, but the brow piece Kelly put down already has a nose, so he uses it as a chin.  Darla got eye bags, but she uses them as blender pieces to cover the edges on the model’s cheeks.  And Julian got horns, but he decides to put them on the chin (….).  When they switch, Jamie gets a full face, and decides to cut it up and make it look like Frankenstein.  Emily figures out that Darla wanted her to use the little nose piece as more blender pieces pretty quickly.  Adam gave Rob some horns, but he also brought out all the paint to try and send Rob in the ‘alien diva’ direction that he was thinking.  And Regina got…. something.  It doesn’t show it.  The editing has them switching furiously now as they go into paint mode.

Team Orange has a guy who looks like he’s been picking at himself with his Freddy claws.  Jill Wagner (who’s on Wipeout and Teen Wolf) says that she loves it, and the execution *is* really great, but she thinks it’s not the most original idea.  Team Purple has the Egyptian Goddess, that now looks kind of like an Oni demon with the horns on the chin.  They’re blended a little rough.  Team Green went for the Frankenstein route, and it turned out fairly well.  Lastly, Team Blue has a blue alien diva, and she looks great.  The paint is good, and Adam chose a GREAT wig,  Team Blue wins with the alien diva, and Adam gets immunity because of his wig choice and the little chin he did.

After that, they get a little surprise that Rayce has some work for a client that he has to do, so he won’t be with them during this challenge.  But he’s got someone to help him, and it’s RJ!  He’s such a sweet guy, but when he’s in the lab, he turns into a ball buster.  Don’t forget, he IS a teacher, after all.

So, for their Spotlight Challenge, they head to a sound stage, and it turns out they’re going to be making creatures to match a sound that was created for them by Erik Aadahl, who’s been around the block in the sound creation scene.  This is actually a really cool idea, because sound incites the human imagination more than any other sensory input.  They’re working in pairs and get to choose their own teams.  Logan and Rob get a low, congested growl, so they’re going for a big, snotty beast.  Jamie and Emily get some clicky noises, like a bird or insect.  So they’re going for a bird-like creature with a big feathered cowl.  The drawing is very Predator and it looks cool.  Adam and Regina get a robot sound with mechanized words.  Adam wants to go full robot, but Regina doesn’t.  Adam has immunity, so this could be trouble town.  Regina feels that a robot’s been done before, but she doesn’t have a solid concept yet on what they should do instead.  Anthony and Darla get a horror sound where there’s ghostly wailing and breathing all at once, so they decide to go with a demon who harvests souls, and are going to do multiple faces in the chest.  Stephanie and Kelly get a bunch of ticking, like a clock, so they go with a clockmaker’s wife.  He created her after his real wife died, and they make her look like a 40’s housewife.

And then there’s Julian and Ben.  They have heavy breathing, and then the sound of a knife afterwards, and they are LOST.  They try to maybe start sculpting something, but when Laura and Anthony start questioning their concept, they have no real answers because they have no real concept.  So, they sit in design hell for a few hours until they come up with an idea for a demon that steals peoples’ faces.  They’re WAY behind, though.  But, at least they have company.  Adam and Regina are also in the same developmental purgatory.  They finally decide on an alien super soldier, which is Regina’s idea.  Their sound is SO robot though, that it seems like a mistake.  I get that she doesn’t want to do the obvious, but on paper, this doesn’t seem to match their sound, but we’ll see how it turns out.  RJ gets right on their cases about putting some clay down NOW.  I think it’s the most bossy I’ve EVER seen RJ.

Anthony’s doing the chest with all the different faces, and he gets this cool idea to use the silicone face casts of the models to push wet clay into.  And when he takes them out, he gets the basic shape of faces that he can bend to his will.  It’s a great time-saving idea instead of having to sculpt all these faces from scratch.

On Day 2, Rob is really up against the clock, because him and Logan are making an entire creature suit, and that takes time.  RJ’s all over them about time.  Adam and Regina are in big trouble at this point because they need to get things molded, so they’re working REALLY fast to try to get SOMETHING that they can mold, because tomorrow’s application day, and they can’t mold then.  I mean… yeah they could, but they wouldn’t have time to paint anything, and they’d be in bigger trouble than they are now.  It doesn’t show it, but I guess they get everything done in time.

Application Day has arrived.  Kelly and Stephanie decide to give their clockwork girl a prop, so Stephanie draws a portrait of the clockmaker and his wife for the model to hold.  She ages it with tea and puts it in a frame.  Logan and Rob don’t want to put their stuff on the model until last looks because it’s so big, and they don’t want him to have to sit in it for hours.  That’s risky.  Adam and Regina are still up shit’s creek because he’s still making things while she’s applying.  RJ’s after them again (it’s kind of hilarious how much of a *teacher* he is – some would say he’s being a dick, but he knows the deadlines.  He’s been through two seasons of these deadlines).  And Last Looks doesn’t really help them.

You know, I’ve always wondered how far they actually have to go to the reveal stage.  In the aerial shots, there are several buildings in the campus, so I wonder which one the reveal stage is, if it’s any of those.  I NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS.

Okay, so here’s the final looks:

Anthony and Darla:

I don’t hate this one as much as the judges do, but the face is kind of bad (Darla, nooooo).  I actually really dig the chest, though.  I think it goes with the sound really well, though the chest movements done by the actor are distracting.  Would have been better if he’d just stood still.

 

Logan and Rob:

This one turned out really messy.  It’s like a giant snot ball, and there’s so much going on with the face and body that there isn’t really a good focal point.  I like Anthony and Darla’s more than this one, but it’s safe.

 

Stephanie and Kelly:

Goes with the sound PERFECTLY.  The model’s movements are perfect, too.  She’s really adorable, and the best one on stage.

 

Julian and Ben:

Turned out SO COOL, especially considering how far behind they were.  He’s really quite scary looking, and they knew not to go crazy with a chest piece, and use the model’s body to save time.

 

Adam and Regina:

Mess.  Hot mess.  It doesn’t match the sound at all.  The chest piece, and the painting on it, is really good, though.  Regina’s face is so bad though.  They were lost this entire challenge.  And it’s all going to fall on her since he has immunity.

 

Jamie and Emily:

I love, love, love this one.  I would have put it in a top look.  It’s just so cool, and goes well with the sound.  I loved Julian and Ben’s demon too, but I think I liked this one just a little bit more.

 

So, the top looks are Kelly and Stephanie’s clockwork girl, and Julian and Ben’s demon.  The bottom looks are Anthony and Darla’s demon-o-many-faces, and Adam and Regina’s Alien.  I know it seems like I’m just saying that I choose the winners and losers perfectly, but I’ve watched and rewatched all episodes and all seasons of this show so many times that it’s kind of easy to pick who’s going to win by the judges’ reaction.  My mom is also good at it, since we watch Face Off together every week.  So yes, I did pick Stephanie to win it all, because it was her concept for the clockwork wife, and she also did the cute drawing.

As a new thing, the champs get to kind of vocalize why they think their people on the bottom should stay, and RJ thankfully points out to the judges how Anthony used the silicone casts of the models to make all the faces on the chest.  The chest was really good on their makeup, I thought.  The face just wasn’t.  Laura also says that Darla’s shown so much good stuff.  Personally, I kind of knew Regina would be going home as soon as they were on the bottom.  It’s happened quite a few times over the years where the person who is partnered with the person who has immunity goes home.  Regina’s sad, but knows it’s not over for her when she does indeed get eliminated.  Sad face.

 

I’d give this episode a solid 9.5, because I absolutely adore the idea of using sound to create characters.  Sound is where your imagination flies.