Face Off - Finale!

[leia131]

Another season of Face Off is over, and this will be my last post on that subject for a while. So let's see if my bb Nora was able to pull off a win! Going into the second part of this finale, she was in really good shape.


The final challenge this season was to work with a director to make a (very) short film. This is a phenomenal final challenge (imo) because it's basically what they'll be doing (or hope to be doing) out in the real world. Last week, each designer was given a script with two characters, made said characters, and had a screen test with the director, Patrick Tatopoulos.

Nora had the best first week critique, with her looks basically totally done and Patrick happy with them overall. There were some color adjustments to be made, but no re-sculpting necessary. Her plot was a prey character being hunted through the forest by a big, scary predator character.

Ben was in the middle, with his sculpts done, but he didn't have time to fully apply or paint them, so his screen test didn't go quite as well and Patrick had several adjustments he wanted made. His plot was an alien dude resurrecting an old, dead alien because Reasons.

Evan didn't finish his looks in time either, and his paint was crap. Patrick had a LOT of adjustments he wanted made, including disliking the whole look of one of the characters, and Evan was definitely in the most trouble after the initial screen test. I think he's the only one who had to do a total re-sculpt. His plot was a wanderer and a prisoner, both infected with a disease, but the prisoner much further along in its progression.

For week two, as sometimes happens in the movie industry, the scripts were changed slightly and each movie now required a third character. Nora's was another character of the same species as her prey, who was hiding, waiting for the prey to lead the hunter to him. The hunter becomes the hunted, and all that. Ben's twist was to add a beautiful female alien to seduce the resurrected alien, and Evan's twist was a fully infected terrifying creature coming upon his other two characters. Basically he had to make three stages of the same disease.

So, now that we're all up to speed, let's take a look at the final makeups!



Here's Nora's Prey character after Week 1:


And here she is during Week 2, on set:

As you can see, nothing really needed to be changed. She definitely looks like she's been running through the woods for a while, all realistically banged up and gross.



And here is Nora's hunter character, Week 1:

I wouldn't want to be hunted by that guy. And I think making him a tree makes perfect sense, as it's great camouflage. I also love the detail in both the wood sculpt and the trophy band across his chest.


Week 2, on set:

She changed his color palette a bit, but he's otherwise just as solid as he was the first week.


Somehow, there's not a solo picture of Nora's third character anywhere on SyFy's site. What the actual fuck. Here's the best I could find:

He was meant to be the same species as the girl, but much bigger and scarier, and able to intimidate the tree guy. All of that was successful, and the judges (and Patrick) all loved Nora's three looks. They were cohesive, put together, well painted and applied, she rocked the added third character, and she was able to adapt their makeup to the water they ended up running through while filming. GO NORA!



Ben's alien, Week 1:

Is it just me, or is this kind of boring?

Week 2, on set:

He added a bit more detail and contrast in the colors, but it's basically the same.


Resurrected alien, Week 1:

He's less boring, but this look doesn't tell as much story as Nora's and Evan's. This could be just about anyone.


Week 2, on set:
It's kind of hard to see, but Ben changed the color palette of the resurrected alien to more brown than grey, and also painted more contrast into his face to really bring out the sculpted wrinkles. Resurrected dude was Ben's best look on the finale, actually; he really looked dead and mummified.

This is the only pic I could find of Ben's third look, and fortunately it highlights all the problems:

1. She doesn't look at all like an alien, 2. You can barely tell that she's wearing a facial prosthetic, it's not enough for a finale look, 3. Why are her eyes randomly purple? 4. Why is she purple? 5. The application around her mouth is SO BAD OMG SO BAD. I don't even think Ben did that personally, I think it was one of his helpers (that's definitely not him in that picture) but he's still on the hook for it. And it is BAAAAAD.



Evan's wanderer, Week 1:



Patrick thought she wasn't diseased enough, so Evan jacked up the contrast and colors for Week 2:

That's better. Evan also did a good job improvising, because the wanderer originally had a coat, which Patrick made her take off, so Evan had to quickly make her arms/shirt look dirty to match the rest of her. Which he did well.


Prisoner, Week 1:

As you may have noticed from above, this guy looked DRASTICALLY different in Week 2. Patrick did not like his snaggled-toothed demeanor at all, and when the third stage of infection was thrown in, Evan had to take this dude down a notch or ten.




It's a good thing too, because this half-face look makes it much more clear that the disease is spreading and taking him over, and the one crazy contact is a nice effect. That said, these looks both seem less real than Nora and Ben's, I think because Evan's application/painting skills aren't as great. (P.S. Out of all these half-assed plots, this is the movie I most wish was real. Where did this disease come from? Why is this guy tied here? What's the wanderer's deal? I MUST KNOW.)



Evan's third look, the fully diseased dude:

I am not a fan of this. (It's also disturbingly similar to his look from week one that Patrick disliked...) The colors are not quite right in comparison to the half-diseased dude, his eyes are green while the other guy's are yellow, and the weird split on his head doesn't seem to follow from the vein-y thing the other two have going on; it just seems random. And what is Evan's obsession with bizarre teeth? This also looks REALLY fake. Like, I don't believe for one second that that's really his chest. The judges were, however, impressed that Evan managed to do two completely new sculpts in such a short time.


For posterity, here are the helper teams:

Team Nora: Jasmine, Ricky, and Meg.



Team Evan: Stevie, Kevon, and Libby




Team Ben: Jason Jordan, and Scott. Maybe if you'd picked some women, Ben, your female character wouldn't have looked like such shit.



So, after all that, who won? Was it Nora, the front runner going into this week? Evan, the most improved? Ben, who has previously seemed to have some weird hold over the judges?


Evan, Nora, and Ben holding hands as the suspense mounts. I want to dislike Nora wearing that jacket over her nice outfit, but I just can't. She somehow makes it work.



Can you see through the confetti?




THE WINNER IS NORA!!!!! Yeah, that's right, I picked the winner. Waaaay back in August, I picked Nora as my fav, and look where we are now. :D


NORA FOREVER




What will I post about now?