We open this week STRAIGHT INTO THE ACTION. The designers enter the workroom and the models are in various stylized costumes with wings. It’s pretty badass.
What ladies night looks like in my house
Megan the model appears to have finally achieved her true form as an impish badass. I hope she walks around in that outfit at home. Love you forever Megan!
Can someone give Megan a spinoff show already?
Today’s foundation challenge is based on Norse mythology and the Valkyries. That’s pretty much the entire challenge – just make makeup to go with the wings under the theme of Valkyrie. I dig it. Douglas Noe is the guest judge. He tells them to make a character that tells a story without uttering a word. Isn’t that like… the general idea behind everything they should be designing?
Robert taps into his inner german and douses his entire model in blood. Because she’s a warrior. Which is actually pretty valid. I like that everyone is finally doing a beauty makeup, but Robert is on to something, these are supposed to be beautiful badasses, badass is still an important part of the challenge!
Since we have a spotlight AND focus challenge this week I’ll just cut to the chase and show off the final looks.
Mel – subtle. Focusing on the lips worked well
Yvonne – subtle, focusing on the eyes worked well, and the contouring on the cheeks
Melissa – Sorry but anytime you have a painted forehead design I’m gonna go to Stargate in my mental database. Teal’c forever bitches. That said, it’s fine. I have no strong feelings either way on this one.
Walter – This look relies heavily on the colored contact lenses. I wish he had better emphasized the eyes and spent more time on the lips.
Robert – I wish the face paint was gold or silver since I think that would have been more regal, and the blood conveys ‘warrior’ all on it’s own. But overall I actually really like it.
Melissa wins, I don’t totally get it, but it’s not offensive or bad so whatever, Melissa has immunity this week, got it.
Time for the Spotlight challenge. McKenzie is standing in a room full of vaguely middle eastern fabrics, vaguely middle eastern/indian music is playing, and there’s a lot of lamps and metallic vases.
This week’s challenge is actually in interior design, joke’s on you all!
I just finished reading Alif the Unseen so I’m on a bit of a djinn/genie kick, but this type of thing ALWAYS makes me nervous since (especially without resourse materials and the internet) this can veer into the cartoony or offensive pretty quickly. Fingers crossed show, don’t hurt me and my liberal hippie heart.
Everyone starts to design. Mel chose my favorite piece – an amazing hammered metal/stained glass style vase; and she decides to incorporate the gazelle etched into the design as her main sculpture. I hate it and wish she’d opted to replicate the texture of her piece into her design instead. Cant you hear me yelling through the TV Mel? Damnit.
In general most of the designers are making animal-themed designs. I kind of wish they had been given more reference material since that seems… weird. I appreciate that they’re all trying to be creative, and avoid clichés, but that’s leading to a lot of half-baked concepts. Ugh this challenge is not impressing me thus far. (and honestly, I think it’s because the designers are trying to be respectful, but they don’t want to accidentally put something racist or insensitive on the runway so they’re changing the theme to ‘most inoffensive interpretation of this challenge’ which to me says it’s kind of a shitty challenge)
The Westmore’s arrives for a walkthrough and Michael immediately tells Mel to do exactly what I wanted her to do. Hey! Michael can hear me! On my god I don’t know what to do with all this power! Walter is doing a dragon theme. Robert is doing a cat. Michael tells everyone to add fantasy and be less literal with the animals. Michael is on a role this week.
End of day 1, start of Day 2. Walter is the only designer with a completed molded face piece, and he’s happy with it and off to working on his cowl. Mel’s new approach is WAY better than her gazelle theme, it’s now really art deco and stylized, and I think it might be amazing if she can get it done. Also I’m shouting she should lean in and make it a full steam punk genie. GLENN WILL SUPPORT YOU. JUST DO IT. Sigh.
Walter had timing issues and was down to the wire casting his mold. Melissa drops everything to help him finish (and I’m pretty sure I saw Mel and Yvonne helping) and again, team spirit raises everyone up. That said that seems agonizing.
Robert isn’t doing a cowl this week because he wants to focus on a single quality piece. Honestly at this point I’m rooting for him to knock it out of the park. We’ll see.
End of day 2, start of Day 3. Walter’s cowl came out perfectly fine after all that drama. Ahhh editors, your manufactured drama amounted to nothing yet again.
Models arrive. Mel hates her makeup. Time is up, everyone has a lot left to do in last looks. Mel, Rob and Robert are having massive technical and timing issues. Walter and Yvonne and Melissa appear to be fine. Time is up, Rob’s paint job is unfinished. Let’s see if the judges notice, time for the runway.
This week’s judges are Glenn, Neville, Ve and Bill Corso.
Mel is up first. Her design is… not what I expected it to be. I thought she was using the blue as a base and would be layering color and shapes to make it match the art deco bronze style of her vase. Instead there’s just random touches of bronze and piping all over the place. It feels really disheveled and lacking direction. What the hell happened Mel? The face has some structure but the paint job does nothing to work with it, AND there’s some major issues like the jaw is huge and there’s a massive under bite. Did the lip come unglued? The shapes just don’t make sense, it feels like she just threw a bunch of things on the clay and called it a day. It sucked because you can see some of her talent peeking out, I like the sunken eye and some of the paint, but it just feels like she was uninspired and that sucks.
Melissa’s paint scheme is what I thought Mel’s was going to be – lots of bronze and gold layered over hints of blue. It gives it an antiqued metal feel that’s also shiny and magical. I don’t fully understand the pot-marked flesh, is it supposed to be burns? Either way the whole silhouette and color scheme read as mischievous, which was part of the assignment, so I’m happy with it. Melissa refers to it as an unconventional approach, which it is, but I still like it. I feel like it’s a genie on an alien planet, or in a fantasy universe. It still reads as magical but the liberties she took work well. I dig it, even if it is a bit random. (I think i’m getting vibes of Alien ‘Orphan Annie’. I would watch that movie.)
Walter’s design feels very witchy/goblin. From the front it feels very generic, and I’m annoyed that the paint job on the nose isn’t blended into the rest of the face. However from the side he redeems himself a bit.. I like the contrast of the paint job on the horns and I get a lot more ‘character’ out of the design, especially the creepy purple-black tongue.
Yvonne’s design… I think I like, just not for this challenge. It feels a little childish (as in oriented towards a child audience, not child-like). That said, I love a lot of the technical work – the sculpture of both the face piece and the cowl are impeccable. I like the flesh tone she wound up with. I even think the gold tusks are cute, although they feel slightly oddly placed. I also spent 20 minutes googling ‘do elephants have eyebrows’ (there is a lot of disagreement over this, but based on pictorial evidence, if they DO have eyebrows they’re almost impossible to detect with the naked eye). Anyway, I like this piece, but I don’t think it should be in the top. Also I hate the weird metal hat, I think that’s part of what pushed the whole look into the cartoony realm.
Rob decided to go for an Incan/south American inspiration in his design. I… don’t know how I feel about this one. I think it’s a little conceptual and comes down to taste. I don’t feel like I ‘get’ it, but that said the sculpting and paint seem well done and to achieve what he wanted to, so I’m sort of… “meh, seems fine” on the whole thing. I think it has potential to be a really interesting spin, but the story isn’t evident, I think I need it explained more to me. That said his paint job almost looks like Jade/Turquoise/Stone and that’s impressive to me, it’s a lot of depth and nuance.
Megan the model is giving it her everything to sell Robert’s makeup. She is oozing charisma and charm in every pose, but it is… rough. I don’t even know what to say about this. It just doesn’t compare to what everyone else did and I think it’s time for Robert to go home. He seems like a great guy, and talented, but he’s just out of his league at this point. The mold is cartoony, the paint job is cartoony, and the wig is cartoony. I think that’s his aesthetic and it works for some of the challenges, but he hasn’t demonstrated enough of his realism skills and at this point I’m just annoyed, I need to see more from him than the wacky character week after week. Sorry Robert.
The judges deliberate, Melissa and Yvonne are safe. I’m slightly surprised Melissa isn’t in the top looks, but it’s not a massive injustice.
Rob is up. Glenn says it’s a solid and daring concept that was well done. Ve loves the mottling on the paint job but thinks it’s cool overall. Neville likes the silhouette the ears added to it, and he also likes the fusion of the cultural references. It’s starting to grow on me, especially when I look at more of the ‘fusion’ details so fine, it’s a little less weird. Still a little weird. I like weird.
Mel’s genie is supposed to be half lamp. Ve says it’s wonky. Nothing about the design says genie, it’s just vaguely alien. Neville says the most important element is to make your design cool or pretty or attractive, he says the thinness of the face isn’t attractive. Bill says the design doesn’t feel alive and hinders the model. Fair feedback. She’s clearly not proud of the work and takes the insight and suggestions well.
Robert’s genie is supposed to be the genie of excessive celebration. She has a tray of cocktails. I kinda thought most geographic areas that have Genies in their mythology tend to overlap with geographic areas and cultures that are not big on the alcohol consumption, but maybe I’m mixing my cultural stereotypes – in any case it feels kind of taboo and insensitive but I could be overreaching. Bill says his biggest problem with the anatomy is the ears are directly next to the eye sockets, and the color is muddy. Glenn says it’s one of Robert’s more successful makeups, but it’s shockingly inaccurate to the challenge so he’s so close but so far away. Agreed I would have fewer issues with this look if it was for a whimsical challenge.
Walter’s genie was supposed to be creepy and evil and reptilian. Bill says he did a great job and sculptural it works well. Glenn says the proportions are evocative about the mischievous evil nature of the creature. He likes the colors and why he chose them. Ve says the scaling on the arms works really well and she likes the level of detail.
The top looks are Walter and Rob. I personally think Rob did a better job of incorporating ‘genie’ into his design, and Walter did a better job of incorporating every single element of his lamp into the design, so they both focused on different elements but excelled in their own way. The winner is… Walter. No complaints here, well done Walter.
The person going home this week is… Robert. Glenn says the judges love his humor but it didn’t work for this challenge. Agreed, and honestly I think if he pushed himself beyond the humor approach he could really grow. Robert is happy he went out on such a weird concept. Ah well. I’ll miss his presence and elaborate characters, but I think we’re now finally down to the best of the best, so I’m excited to see the caliber of looks we get next week.
What did you all think? As always leave your thoughts in the comments, I’ll see you there.