Beyond a shadow...

Well it’s time to go back to everyone’s favorite monster makeup competition, okay the only monster makeup completion on TV at this point, SYFI’s Face Off.  As we slowly weed through this season’s hopefuls I have to say right now that the major talents, at least to me have been Tyler and Rashad.  Sadly, Rashad always seems to be a bridesmaid when it comes to top looks.  This is a double edged sword when it comes to these kinds of competitions, of course you always want the win but, being in top looks at least guarantees you exposure in a good way in front of the judges.

This week we bring in a different guest judge, Oren Peli, the mastermind behind Paranormal Phenomena, to introduce this week’s spotlight challenge.   The challengers come into a room of shadows; literally, there are shadow silhouettes of various creatures on the wall.  The contestants must choose a shadow and make a supernatural creature that casts it.  I have to say, at first I was laughing at how simple this seemed.  Your shape is given to you, all you have to do is build it, right?  Wrong!  Think about it realistically, not only do you have to come up with a creature, you have to conform it to someone else’s prefabricated idea.

Each artist rushes off to sculpt away the rest of the afternoon before the preview.  Everyone seems to be coming along except poor Tanner who cannot seem to grasp scary in his “cute” and “small animalish” nose.  Don’t worry Tanner, your bad luck soon finds a mate in Corrine who had a mold disaster.  Despite all of her efforts, she can’t get the cowl out of the mold.  Frustration mounts as she pounds away but the only thing that results is a broken piece that she discards for a wig and a set of prefabbed ears.

Niko, who is working on what appears to be a bull inspired creature is once again running behind and turns to girlfriend Cat and Tyler to help him out of his timing situation.  A decision that Cat is really going to regret as it cost her time on her mantis styled creation.  Tanner, poor Tanner, has run into yet another problem as he attempts to create horns from red solo cups… While at first I thought “brilliant!”  My next thought was “holy smokes that’s going to weigh a ton!”

On the day of reveal we now see that helping Niko has cost Cat everything but the head of her creature.  Paint is flying every which was as both Cat and Tanner realize they have nothing for the body of their creations.  What do you do? Well you either paint the face with spots of obnoxious yellow (Cat) or you cover him in plastic wrap and pray that it works (Tanner).  Thru all the odds and ends of last looks we get a few fleeting glances, and to tell you the truth none of it looked promising.  Here’s what we got:

Cat: Let’s start with cat and the yellow spots.  She created a mantis creature with no claws.  I would think you needed those but, who am I to judge.  What comes out looks like one of two things, either a man in a mask or a weird pincher faced alien.  The lines in the face are hard and angular and the lines seem to just out with the mass of black paint she used.  The stand out, and not in a good way, is her use of a toxic yellow looking paint that feels spattered as a last ditch effort.

Chloe:  This is supposed to be some sort of cow demon thing, I think.  What she presents is another overly draped creation that looks like one of those cow skull ornaments that people hang when they are trying to go for a south western theme.  I’m really starting to get tired of Chloe using lots of fabric to decrease the effort needed for finer details in a body.

Corinne:   This girls needs to fall on her knees and thank god that she knows how to blend paint.  Even with a cowl mold that was a no go, and using prefabbed ears, what she presented was a goblin clear out of Grimm’s faire tales.

Darren:  Okay, you won’t see thin in the attached gallery, but the only thing that could sum up this creature is “dirty homeless dude with a huge vagina on his back.”  I cannot even begin to dissect this idea.  It’s supposed to be a hunchback that swallows your soul with a mouth on its back, or something… I don’t even care.

George:   George needs to be given a lesson on a color wheel, There are far more colors available than differing shades of red man.  What he has put forth this week looks like a skeleton that is draped in Kool-aide and bubble gum.  Not the worst, but by far not the best thing seen on the run way.

Graham:  This cockroach inspired creature should have took Top look.  You want to feel sick look it up in the gallery.  From the moment it went out, all I could do is writhe in my seat and feel sick to my stomach.  The neck piece is what sells it, I looks like he glued maggots down her throat, and ugh, it gave me a serious case of the hibby jibbies.

Matt: See silent hill… uninspired… next…    

Niko:  This was a large makeup and I give him full credits for that, the face was bullish and the horns were of a decent shape.  However, this bull monster’s face seemed a bit lopsided.  I didn’t fully read it as bull at first.  I read fuzzy, miss shaped, bug, animal thing.  The judges remarked that they were scared of it, really Graham turns your guts out but the fuzzy, bull bug scares you more?

Rashad:  Rashad’s demon character was a brilliant choice and I loved that her horns were so well done.  They really brought something to the creature, but the more I look the more I saw Pan’s Labyrinth and, although she was beautiful, I couldn’t say it was original.

Tanner:  I feel so bad for this guy.  It was heart breaking to watch everything he tried, it all just fell apart.  First the face, it was too teddy bear cute.  The nose was sunken in like my adorable frenchie puppy.  I just wanted to snuggle with it.  The next hiccup was the horns; they were just as I had originally thought, too heavy.  The weight seemed to break the head of the beast leaving nothing in their wake but, disappointment.  Finally, the plastic wrap… the character was literally falling apart as it walked down the run way.  There was no saving this travesty.

Tyler:  Oh my god, how this didn’t end up in top looks just blows my mind.  The details of the creature blew me away.  The vac sealed bubbles on the back contained insects and slime; the little legs sprouting from the well painted mouth piece.  It was all so brilliant.

The top looks were a collection of Corrine, Niko and Graham.  Each one had some very strong elements however, when they announced that Niko would be given the win, I can only say I was strongly against it.  Out of the three I would have gone with Graham’s gut wrenching monster.

The bottom contained Darren, Tanner and Cat.  No shock poor little Tanner was sent packing.  Slowly I’m starting to realize this season is total hit and miss.


Monster Gallery