Face Off

Anyone who knows me knows of my little obsession with costumes.  Halloween is my favorite time of year and I love doing crazy off the wall stuff and make up so when I heard about this show I was super excited.

A show strictly about special effects make up?  I love it.  The challenges where great and each of the participants had their own amazing styles.  From the very beginning I loved Tate and Connor.  Tate is imaginative and innovative and a little unorthodox.  Connor is a serious technition and has perfect form and style.  I was very happy to see them in the final and to see one of them win!  I have to say that probably one of my favorite things about this show was that the judges were not just "random famous types who have no business actually critiquing".  They are people who not only work in the business, they are great at what they do!  Ve Neill (Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and the Pirates movies) Patrick Tatopolous (Independence Day, Godzilla and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans ) and Glenn Hetrick (Legion, The x-files and Buffy/Angel) are the judges.  I learned alot of new techniques watching these artists work and I can't wait to put some of them into practice in the future.

Here's a few of my favorite makeups from this season:

Anthony's creation in the body painting challenge.  I wish I could have found a full body shot so you could see the piece of bark being torn away from the torso to reveal the skin.  Brilliant work.

Connor and Jo's creation from the alien challenge.  I could see this on an episode of Star Trek for sure.

Connor's zombie.  I love the classic take and the leathery "I've been a rotting corpse for a while now" look.  I could see this one on the set of The Walking Dead.

Tate's zombie.  This really shows the difference between those two boys.  Connor's was excellent in it's execution while Tate's had vision and imagination.  I love how his makeup tells the story of this woman being grabbed from behind and torn open. (Note the fingernail tearing on the chest.)  The torn jaw and bloated tongue are disgusting and great touches.

Gage's creation for the finale.  He choose to do Industrial Hansel and Gretel.  It was his most brilliant work and very disturbing.  The shard of metal in the witches mouth and the child hands pushing out of the witches stomach were great.

Tate's post-apocalyptic Little Red Riding Hood.  Awesome concept!  I loved the idea of the group of strong female warriors banding together and hunting down the werewolves.  I am amazed that he made a werewolf this intricate in basically 3 days.  I also loved that is was white and had a tail.  I want to see this movie.

Connor's haunted Frog Prince.  Masterfully executed and interesting.  It was cool to see him do some major problem solving when his frog head piece collapsed after casting.  Here's a close up of the Frog's face during his moment of transformation

The best part was that he ran a small tube into the actors mouth that he blew into and it inflated the bladder under the chin just like a real frog.  This is why Connor won.  Amazing work.  I'm sure he will have a very successful career in Hollywood but I hope Tate gets a lot of work out of the show too.

Now that I'm feeling inspired, it's time to start working on costumes for ComiCon.