Face Off (2011) s10e12 Episode Script
Skull Island: Reign of Kong
1 I think it's phenomenal.
It doesn't look very realistic.
Simply put, you've nailed it.
Thank you.
McKenzie: Previously on "Face Off" Walter's Death Knight brought him his second win, but Yvonne fell short and was sent home.
And tonight Welcome to the jungle.
What? McKenzie: The final four will fight to the finish.
Looking good.
I don't really like it right now.
I'm drowning in my own terrible ideas.
It's kill or be killed, and I'm a disaster.
You look not so happy.
I'm swinging for the fences, but I may end up going home.
Whew.
Okay.
It all comes down to this.
You've really stepped up on this one.
The profile of this is terrible.
McKenzie: In the end, only one will win a VIP trip from Kryolan Professional Make-up to one of their 85 international locations, a brand new 2016 Fiat 500, and $100,000.
[exciting music.]
This is "Face Off.
" [exciting music.]
[dramatic music.]
This is scary.
[laughs.]
I am so nervous.
We have no idea what's happening.
We're in this uncovered truck, and we're driving through this whole jungle area.
There's a big, exposed body of water, and I'm glad that Walter is on the outside, so if one of us dies, it's gonna be him.
There's a dinosaur dig! [laughing.]
I see, like, these dig spots, and I'm super excited.
So now I'm hoping for something dinosaurs.
This is really cool.
I see McKenzie.
[percussive music.]
Let's do this.
- Hey, guys.
- Hey, McKenzie.
- Hi.
- Hey.
Welcome to the jungle.
[all laugh.]
As you've seen, you've already begun an expedition that will lead three of you to the finale.
And I bet you're wondering where you're headed.
- Yep.
- Both: Yes.
Well, it's a dark and mysterious place, and it's home to one of the largest and most recognizable stars of the silver screen: the legendary King Kong.
- [gasps.]
- What? - [laughs.]
- That's right, guys.
You're all headed to Skull Island.
I am a huge King Kong fan, and it's really cool.
I want to know what we have to do.
This is great.
To get you up to speed, I brought in a very special guest.
He's an executive producer for Universal Creative, and he and his team are bringing King Kong to life in an incredible new attraction opening at Universal Orlando resort in summer 2016 called Skull Island: Reign of Kong.
- What? - That's really cool.
Please give a warm welcome to Mike West.
[applause.]
Thank you, McKenzie.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'm thrilled to be here, and I cannot wait to see what evolves from this challenge.
Me too.
Now, I know that this attraction was a massive undertaking, but what can you tell us about it? Well, this is an intense adventure that will take you to the very depths and terrors of a dramatically themed environment, where you will become part of the next generation of storytelling for the legendary King Kong.
Even before you board these huge expedition vehicles, you'll have to forge through a dense jungle and make your way through a maze of ancient temple ruins.
Now, once you're on board the truck, your mission is to discover species of unknown origin.
You find yourself in a battle with unimaginable creatures of every size and shape before you come face to face with the colossal Kong himself.
- Oh, my God.
- Oh.
[laughter.]
Really cool.
Sounds like too much to handle.
Oh, my gosh.
This attraction sounds so cool.
I can only imagine how much fun the challenge is gonna be.
All right, so can you tell these guys a little bit more about Skull Island's isolation and how that has affected the way its creatures have evolved? While the rest of the planet was covered in a prolonged global winter, superheated thermal vents allowed Skull Island to remain warm enough so that these huge prehistoric creatures could survive, and over the course of millions of years of evolution, they became more intelligent and more aggressive and far more dangerous.
Cool.
All right, guys.
So that bizarre evolution is at the heart of today's challenge.
Your Spotlight Challenge is to select one of the uniquely evolved species from the Skull Island: Reign of Kong attraction and imagine its evolution into an intelligent being.
- Interesting.
- All right.
- Very cool.
- Sounds like fun.
This challenge is really cool.
I'm super excited, and I would love to get one more win before going into the finale.
So, Mike, I hear you have a special prize in store for the winner of this week's challenge.
Indeed, we do, McKenzie.
The winner of this challenge will receive an all-expense paid trip to enjoy Universal Studios and Universal's Islands of Adventure.
And you'll be among the first to experience Skull Island: Reign of Kong.
- Oh, my God.
- So cool.
That's so cool.
I love theme parks.
I've never been to Universal Orlando, and this attraction sounds so awesome.
I really want this prize.
That's so amazing.
Thank you, again, so much.
- Thank you.
- All right, guys.
It's time for you to continue your expedition.
In the jungle around us are several archaeological sites containing fossils that represent some of the creatures from Skull Island: Reign of Kong.
And once you've found a creature you'd like to evolve, go ahead and get started on your designs.
- All right.
- Yeah.
- Great.
- [laughs.]
I will see you guys later on at the lab with my dad.
Good luck out there.
- Bye, guys.
- Bye.
Bye.
[intense music.]
I picked this kind of a multi-animal hybrid.
It looks like a pterodactyl, a bat, and rat mixed all into one.
My creature's arms are part of the wings, and I don't want to do that.
In King Kong, everybody's fighting each other.
So I'm thinking that because of evolution, his wings are now on his back so he can fight with his hands.
If there's one to win, this is the one that I want to win.
There's absolutely no room for error this week.
[intense music.]
My creature, he's got a lot of insect features.
He has an armored back and this armored thoracic piece.
And I want to incorporate more human anatomy so it's more hybrid.
With his evolution, he will walk more upright.
He'll have that silhouette of that hunch, but he won't have all the legs and sort of walk horizontally.
I got a dinosaur hybrid, and it's the largest creature on the island, so I want to do a lot of bigger pieces, like a backpiece with a lot of scaling.
It's evolving and becoming smaller in size, so it's realizing it's not the top of the food chain anymore.
So it's trying to adapt and mimic smaller indigenous people to survive.
I'm trying not to do what I did in the last challenge and that was bite off way more than I can chew, and hopefully everything goes well.
[upbeat techno music.]
There's a lot to work with here.
The creature's got this really cool plated, like, armor, and it's basically a crab-like arachnid.
So I've decided that the creature is a scavenger that lives in caverns.
I'm gonna evolve it so that it's smart enough to set traps instead of outright hunting.
I want to be in the finale.
I you know, we're so close, I can taste it, so I just got to not screw it up.
All right, guys.
Let's pack up and go back to the lab.
We get to the lab, and I would really like to get the face sculpted and done today.
I'm gonna be tying in a higher brow as well as, like, a bat-like nose.
I really want this face to be extremely high detailed, very wrinkly, very cracked skin texture, because that's my style.
That neck looks awesome.
Well, thank you.
[rock music.]
When I'm sculpting the face, I want to do something that's outside my comfort zone.
So I'm sculpting insertion points for the fabricated mandibles, antenna, and mouth pinchers.
These pieces will resemble the original crab.
I want to make it to the end.
I've gotten this far, so I need to push myself to make something truly great and remarkable.
[driving techno music.]
I'm thinking that my face sculpt looks a little cartoony.
There's a smile happening.
And I don't want a big purple dinosaur onstage.
So I start adding a lot of teeth to make it look inherently more fierce.
Once I get the teeth in and some texture going, it actually looks really cool.
I'm hoping once it's applied and painted, it'll look like that and not Barney.
That looks really cool, man.
Thank you.
[techno music.]
Hey, guys, we're here to check in on you.
- Hey.
- Hi.
Tell us about your evolved creature you got here.
So he's basically gonna be a T.
Rex caveman person.
I am gonna be doing a cowl, and if I have time, I want to do flat pieces of scales to bring it all together.
You're really gonna have to pick and choose Yeah.
What's gonna be the most important, and everything else that's exposed, hide.
Yeah.
My plan right now is to just sculpt the face.
Okay.
And have that be the prosthetic.
And then make the cowl and the backpiece and extra legs, and fabricate all that.
Okay, now, what about down around the throat here? What're you going to do? I might just leave the neck You could add clay into this to blend into this, and then you don't have to worry about if the costume doesn't quite cover something.
That'd be good.
Um, just trying to work in the human element with what that thing looks like.
- Okay.
- What about coloring? The coloring is very skin-like, so I'm gonna go in with a peachy or a tan skin tone.
I don't know.
I think tan would be better.
- Yeah.
- You know, stain.
Because this has a lot of yellow undertones to it - Mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
Which would give you that leathery type of look, and then you use that as your under base and come in and do a lot of great shading.
Yeah.
I thought in terms of the evolution to do this sort of multiple eye thing.
So I'd have red scleras, and then these would be red.
So I would have some static eyes, but the main eyes could move and articulate.
Hmm.
That could look like a mask with human eyes behind it.
- This has to really match up.
- Right.
Because if you do a lot of eye makeup here and this is just left with base and a little bit of shadow, it looks like it's an addition.
Right.
Westmore's given me some good advice, but I realize that I not only have four static eyes; I also have a beak, which are all things the judges hate.
I want so desperately to make it to the finale, but I just keep second-guessing myself, and I feel like right now there's no chance I'm gonna get there, and that's a terrible feeling.
Looking good.
I don't really like it right now.
I'm not loving my sculpture.
It looks odd.
I'm having issues with this mouth looking like a beak.
It's just nothing's going right for me today.
It's a really bad time in the competition to be second-guessing myself, but I'm going to have to start over, because it's better to have something I'm proud of than something that's complete that I hate.
[upbeat techno music.]
I'm really taking my time adding a lot of scales that will catch one's eye.
With reptiles and dinosaurs, the scales are on a kind of a grid.
So I draw in a grid of squares, and then I go in, round out each corner, and that creates that leathery reptile skin.
- That is a lot of scales.
- Yeah.
It is taking a little longer than I had anticipated, but it's my first crack at any kind of dinosaur, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job.
As I'm finishing my sculpt, I'm really liking it, but I'm worried that the brows kind of read like ears.
Mel.
Hmm? Do those read like ears? They don't look like ears.
They're great.
It looks great.
I'm super proud of it, and I'm ready to mold.
[rock music.]
Crabs have these unique little bumps and stuff like that, and I really want to bring that in my sculpture, but if I sculpt each bump, I'm gonna go crazy.
So I just push pearls into the sculpture to get that texture.
I'm liking it, and now I feel like I've got a character I can get behind.
How you doing? I'm struggling a bit.
I've been working on the face all day, but I'm still not really happy with what I'm doing.
I just feel like I'm revving myself up so many times with, "This time will be different," and it keeps failing.
So basically, I have nothing to show for today.
That's time! [dramatic music.]
Who needs this day? Who needs day one, right? Not me.
I'm drowning in my own terrible ideas.
So I'm going to have to start over when I come in tomorrow.
I'm feeling stressed but hopeful that what I produce tomorrow will be better than what I've done today which is nothing.
[energetic techno music.]
- Let's do it! - All right.
Yeah.
One, two, three, four We get into the lab, and the first thing I do is go into the mold room and run a slip cast with slip latex into my face mold so that I can have that face to line up to my cowl.
I really like doing that because it helps me line up my brow bones into the ear line, and it just makes everything so much more synchronized, which is really helpful, especially heading into the finale, because everything needs to be as perfect as possible.
[rock music.]
I'm starting over for the second time.
I just rip everything off the face and make a new decision.
It's an evolutionary challenge, so I'm just taking elements from many different bugs and trying to plate them and make them look armored in a cool way on a human face.
I'm just cutting geometric shapes and placing them on the face.
I'll blend them to make them look like part of the insects' anatomy, but I want to be able to move them around freely while I'm figuring out my silhouette.
Starting over is stressful, but I think it was the right choice.
Only three of us are moving on to the finale, and I'm just trying to focus on making sure this face is worth the delay.
Is this better than yesterday? Well, better than yesterday, yeah, 'cause you didn't have anything yesterday.
[techno music.]
I like to come back to a sculpture with fresh eyes and just kind of give it a once-over and see if I need to correct anything that maybe I didn't notice the day before 'cause I was too into it.
So I just added a few sculptural details on the face and textures, and stuff like that, you know, make sure it all looks good, and then off to the mold room.
I want that mold curing, and then while that's curing up, I can start fabricating.
[rock music.]
So for this backpiece, I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from my photos.
The back has a lot of large square scaling that reminds me of a crocodile, so I just mix those two together, and it adds a really cool silhouette.
It arches the back, and it has a lot of cool textures.
I'm trying to sculpt it as fast as I can, because the last challenge was a bit rough in the time management area.
So this is the last challenge before the finale, and I want to make it to the finale, so I'm trying my hardest to do my very best.
[techno music.]
I want to be able to do something huge with wings, because I would really like to be able to just wow the judges.
So I'm gonna build a mechanism where you pull a string and the wings shoot up into the air.
Just to have that whole motion would just be so cool.
So I grab PVC pipe for the armature that it's sitting on.
I grab springs to create the springback motion, [bleep.]
.
[Bleep.]
.
As I'm testing the wings, both of the springs bend.
[suspenseful music.]
I guess I pulled too tightly down when I was testing it.
It's not gonna spring back up with a bent spring, and I don't have time to take everything apart again.
[bleep.]
.
[Murmurs indistinctly.]
I don't know how these [bleep.]
things are gonna work.
It's frustrating, because I'm swinging for the fences, hoping that these wings would get me to the finale.
[grunts.]
But now I think I may end up going home.
[bleep.]
.
[Bleep.]
.
I bent the springs on the wings, so I'm not gonna have the whole mechanized up and down that I really wanted.
At this point, I'm just gonna have the big wings.
They're gonna be static, which is a major bummer, but at the same time, I have to have something, static or not.
Because the wings are really the core of my design, I'm just gonna make it work.
[driving techno music.]
I'm starting to sculpt my cowl, but I realize I'm not gonna have time to do a big two-part mold, so to save time, I basically am creating a three-dimensional pattern on a flat board so that I can do a one-piece cowl that I will wrap around my model's head during application.
I want to fabricate this headpiece, which is basically my substitution for a cowl.
I also need to fabricate his pinchers.
And if I have time, I'd like to do some sort of chest armor.
It's an insane amount of work, but at this point, we really got to step up our game.
Everybody's trying to pull out the big guns.
So I got to bring it.
There we go.
Nya-nya-nyah.
I'm definitely worried about fabricating just because I have no background in it at all.
But my silhouette is not crazy hard to achieve, which is why I feel like I could do it.
I want the fabrication to look like a suited armor with the same sort of silhouette my insect has.
I also want to do the insect butt, so I'm cutting out shapes sort of arbitrarily and seeing if they'll work.
I don't really know how all this works.
It's a lot of duct tape.
Duct tape is the only tool you need for fabrication.
I don't know what everyone's talking about with heat guns and hot glue.
What do you got going on over here? A lot.
That actually doesn't look bad.
Don't want to toot my own fabrication horn, but toot, toot.
I decided to go with latex for the wings, so I draw out the pattern on the floor, and then in certain spots, I'm gonna create those hole textures so that it looks like it's a very battle-worn fabric.
[exhales sharply.]
It not going as fast as I want it to go, and I'm realizing I'm just not gonna have enough time to finish this today.
[bleep.]
.
Man, these wings are just killing me.
That's time, everyone.
[groans.]
Cool.
Why do you look not so happy? I just couldn't really get the things that I wanted to do to work.
I'm really sweating for application, because we're 24 hours away from knowing who the final three people are gonna be, and I still need to finish these stupid wings.
- This is it, the final - Final four.
We're down to the four.
There's only four.
And three get to go on to the finale.
Mm-hmm.
Tomorrow is the application that determines who is going into the finale.
I feel like we're all too nice to think that it is kill or be killed, but that's basically what's happening.
[laughter.]
I just want to win so badly.
It's so crazy that it's this close.
I feel like we've been through war together.
[laughs.]
We have.
[laughing.]
Oh, I so want to get to the finale, but also, I really want to win this prize.
It's something I can do for my son that would be really fun for him.
You guys ready to go home? - Yeah.
- Yes, please.
[laughs.]
[upbeat techno music.]
- All right, let's roll.
- Let's check out this wardrobe.
Nope.
I have a lot of energy this morning, because I have a lot to do and not that much time to do it in.
So I just need to get everything applied as quickly as possible so I have time to paint.
This has to go well for me to make it into the finale.
Yay.
- How's it going, man? - Nice to meet you.
It's super good to meet you.
I'm just spray-painting your butt right now.
How are you? I'm Amber.
I'm Mel.
I like to pre-paint as much as I can, so my model's just gonna have to sit tight, because I'm gonna be painting for the next couple hours.
I'm doing a lot of highlight and shadow because I want it to be dynamic, but from a distance, I'm not sure if it's just reading as a brown.
So I'm hoping yellows, greens, and oranges will all pop it up a little.
I'm feeling stressed but hopeful.
Okay.
I need to make some mandibles.
At this point, I still need to fabricate the mandibles and the pinchers and the antenna for the face piece, and since they're on the face, I want them to look good, and I don't like that I'm putting them off till last.
So I try to quickly bust that out, and then I have to airbrush the patterns on everything.
The paint job is really gonna be what sells this, and I feel that one of my strongest points in this competition is as a painter.
Even though I'm juggling a lot of things at once, it's just a matter of staying on task.
I don't have time to think.
I just have to do.
Thankfully, I finished the wings, but now I have to make up for lost time.
With my paint scheme, I'm keeping it very skin tone-like by doing veining with greens and blues, just to really create translucency in the skin.
My makeup is coming to life, and I'm feeling like I have a chance.
[tense music.]
- I have to start painting.
- All right.
Application's kind of eating away at my time right now, because I had so many pieces to apply, and now I have less than an hour, and I'm just now starting my paint job.
I am so stupid.
There's a lot to paint, and I'm really rushing at this point.
The judges have said that a good paint job can save a bad sculpture.
Mm.
But at the same time, a really crappy paint job can ruin a really nice sculpture, so I'm trying not to panic.
Okay, head up.
So all right.
Ten minutes, everybody! [upbeat rock music.]
That's time! Okay.
It all comes down to this next hour.
Everything's pretty much pre-painted, but I'm still stressed out because I have a lot to get done.
Whew.
Okay.
I want it so bad.
Like, I can almost taste it.
It's [sighs.]
So close.
Semifinals.
This is one of the most important hours of the competition.
There's a lot on the line.
If I screw up, I'm going home.
Okay, we have a lot to do.
I need to get all of the fabricated pieces on him, and then I need to make everything look nice.
Nya-nya-nyah.
[suspenseful music.]
All right, buddy, how's it doin'? I put the wings on him, and then I take the wardrobe and cut it up the back so that he can slip into it, and then I'm just pinning the rest of it back together.
It's super frantic, but I'm trying to get this done.
It gets real in Last Looks.
I have this crown that I'm going to use on the back of the head to cover some parts that are exposed.
This is so janky.
I really want to be in the finale.
I will do whatever it takes, including lots of duct tape.
'Cause if it goes further back, then they're gonna see all that duct tape, and that would be a [bleep.]
nightmare.
Oh, God.
This is not gonna end well.
Time's running out, and I'm a disaster.
Like, I have a little less than 50% of this paint job done.
And grass.
So I just throw some hemp fibers on his arms to make it look like he's camouflaging himself.
This could actually work.
Probably not, but we'll see.
At this point, I don't have any idea how this is gonna be finished.
15 minutes! That's time, everyone! [tense music.]
- You get finished? - Nope.
Time is up.
The sculpture is so good, but the paint job is so bad.
Like, I don't know what's gonna happen.
At this point, I'm just trying to make peace with the fact that I'm probably not gonna get to the finale.
[suspenseful music.]
Welcome to the "Face Off" reveal stage.
As you know, this is our semifinal, and only three of you will secure a spot in this season's finale.
But before we see your creations, let's say hello to our series judges.
Owner of Alchemy Studio, Glenn Hetrick.
- Good evening.
- All: Hi, Glenn.
Oscar and Emmy Award-winning makeup artist Ve Neill.
Good evening, semifinalists.
- Hi, Ve.
- Good evening.
And creature and concept designer Neville Page.
- Hello.
- All: Hi, Neville.
Okay, this week, your Spotlight Challenge was to choose a creature from Universal Orlando Resort's upcoming attraction Skull Island: Reign of Kong and use it to create an intelligent being that might have evolved from it.
And as a reminder, there's an incredible prize on the line tonight: a trip for two to Universal Orlando Resort including airfare, hotel, park passes, and, of course, you'll be among the first to see the all-new Skull Island: Reign of Kong attraction in person.
Very cool.
Without further ado, let's take a look at your creations.
[intense music.]
I think she looks really cool.
She's feminine, even though she's this big, creepy bug.
I don't know what the judges are gonna say, but I'm proud of what I've done today.
Overall, he's looking cool.
He's looking creepy.
But I don't know if this is enough to get me in the finale.
He's got this really unique look that draws your eye in to his face.
I don't know.
I think it's really cool.
I don't like this makeup.
It would definitely suck to be knocked out of the finale on a bad paint job.
All right, judges.
It's time to go take a closer look.
Mel has done a lot of work here.
She's really elegant.
Turn that way so we can look at your tail.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, back to the front.
I really wish this rough shape around the mouth had been synthesized with the performer's face.
[growls.]
[chuckling.]
That's my favorite creature noise ever.
Really nice paint work.
Some good blending down here too.
Yeah.
I think this would have been a lot more successful if they had been folded up on his back.
- Exactly.
- It would have looked cooler.
It would have been faster to do.
There's some really accomplished forms going on through here.
And a whole lot of them to reconcile.
God, she did a lot of stuff and painted everything pretty decently too.
Mm-hmm.
My favorite part of the fabrication is these really working in the third dimension.
[whispers.]
Yeah.
He didn't do well with painting all these horns.
There's one huge mistake, and it's leaving all this exposed, not covering these with anything.
Bringing this stuff up here to cover this would help so much.
This is the most incomplete makeup I've put onstage, and this is the worst time to have that happen.
Why didn't he cover that up? I'm really hoping it doesn't blow my shot at getting to the finale.
Why didn't he cover that up? This is the most incomplete makeup I've put onstage.
I hope they notice that this is a sculpture I'm really proud of and overlook the fact that this is a paint job I'm really not.
Bringing this stuff up here to cover this would help so much.
- Otherwise, gorgeous sculpturing.
- Yeah.
Thank you.
All right, the judges would like to hear from each of you before choosing this season's finalists.
Walter, will you please step forward? [intense music.]
- Hey, Walter.
- How's it going? Tell us about the genesis of your creature.
I wanted him to have evolved for better fighting, so I figured instead of making wings attached to his arms, I would make separate wings so that he could fight with his hands but also be flying at the same time.
It's a really impressive character.
Some of the facial forms of the sculpting, really cool.
I think a couple of dark tones coming around from the back would have helped.
I love that you try to push yourself, that you're swinging for the fences, especially here in the semifinals.
Thank you.
Your character has a lot of nice tones.
I especially like what you did around the eyes, and there's some really beautiful moments, like in the ear, and you have some nice veining going on.
But it would have been better if those wings were not up.
You should have just tied the buggers down.
Yeah.
I think that the most successful thing you've achieved here is the fact that it feels like this could be in the Kong world.
My favorite feature on this guy is definitely the orbital region.
There's some really cool shapes happening there.
I'm glad to see that shadow is highlighting that.
I'm loving what you're doing.
Thank you.
Walter, you can head back.
Mel, please step up.
Good evening, Mel.
Good evening, Ve.
Tell us about your Skull Island creation.
In evolution, they became bipeds, walking on two feet.
So this part is actually fashioned from what they've evolved from.
They've taken that and made it into armor.
Cool idea.
I mean, she's so elegant.
The distance read is a little muddy, facially, but when you get up close, it's nice.
I like the little bits of red here and there.
You've really stepped up on this one.
Thank you.
- This is pretty darn cool.
- Thanks.
The mouth, it's subtle from a distance, but up close, it gets even more appealing.
But if you had maybe broken up the face a little bit with a bit more specularity, that would have helped, I think, showcase more of the beautiful sculptural form you have happening on that face.
Thank you.
The way that your fabrication integrates with the character is gorgeous.
My one tripping point here is the mouth should have been synthesized into the human nature of the performer, but I love the shapes of it.
Thank you.
Mel, please step back.
- Good job.
- Thanks.
Rob, please step to the center.
- Hello, Rob.
- Hi.
Tell us about your concept.
As the creature evolved, it shrank in size, so it adapted to mimicking and camouflaging to survive, basically.
You've really done an exceptional job.
You're so damn good at sculpting.
To have scales morph across a surface from primary to secondary to tertiary, that takes an awareness that is an innate skill set, but watch out for the big shapes, though, because the profile of this is terrible.
Okay.
It's a visual feast.
Delicious sculptural detail, so awesome work there, but when you have a sculpt that's that beautiful with detail, you really need to give yourself the time to allow the paint to help show off how great the detail is.
I just wish you would have brought the wardrobe up to hide some of the sins of the application.
- Other than that, great work.
- Thank you.
I'm sorry that you didn't take your airbrush at the end and just give a couple of little pops on some of that beautiful sculpting that you did.
I really would have liked to have seen it painted beautifully.
Rob, thank you very much.
Please head back.
Melissa.
- Hey, Melissa.
- Hi, Glenn.
Tell us about your concept.
For their evolution, they are scavenger creatures, so they became smarter and started building traps to capture fresh food.
It's a gorgeous makeup.
I think there's a really harmonious balance between the amount of time that you spent fabricating and the amount of time you spent on a makeup.
I wish that those attenuated feelers were in a slightly different position.
They sort of hang down over his eyes.
That's a tiny note on an otherwise great makeup.
This is a pretty cool character.
I especially love the paint scheme.
Really nice colors, With those beautiful warm browns and that little bit of red in there.
All of these beautiful sculptural pieces around the mouth, and it all works.
When he moves, it goes in and out.
Very nice job tonight, Melissa.
Thank you.
There's so much good stuff here.
This chest piece is beautiful in so many ways.
The third dimension coming out is great.
Bottom line, you have a complete character that's aesthetically pleasing.
Very nice work.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Melissa, please step back.
All right, you can all head back to the makeup room while the judges decide who will move on to the finale.
All right, judges.
So you have some big decisions to make.
Why don't we start with Walter? You know, he had some nice vein work in there.
He had some beautiful shading around the eyes.
Some really great stuff over on the sides by the ears.
There's some things about it that I really do like.
I don't think that it's his best effort.
The sculpting got a little soft for my taste.
It's immediately recognizable, and he's very strong conceptually.
This guy has a vision.
That's such an important piece of the criteria moving someone forward to the finale.
All right, let's move on to Mel.
The paint application's very nice.
She's shown beautiful application technique.
I don't love the forms, though.
They're so primary.
I really did like the form language in its simplicity, its uniqueness, and its symmetry.
I felt it was very bold.
This is the best thing she's done on the show yet.
All right, let's move on to Rob.
He had very poor time management.
The paint job is unfinished.
That yellow chest was just blank.
But absolutely gorgeous detailing on the sculpture.
It's unbelievable that someone at his age would have a skill set that allows him to pull off that kind of detail.
The overall shape was more dog-like, but the precision and the definition of the scales astound me.
Until now, his work has been stellar.
So this puts me on the fence tonight with him.
All right, let's move on to Melissa.
The sculpture of the face is gorgeous.
There's so many forms and each of them painted appropriately.
She had a lot of different paint techniques going on, like the dry-brushing and the airbrushing on the chest piece.
That lack of a cowl was incredibly foresightful to know that she was going to be able to pull off the rear and a front, to have the stuff in the middle, the cowl, not even count.
She seems to be getting better every single challenge we put in front of her.
All right, judges.
Have you chosen your final three? We have.
Let's bring them back out.
[suspenseful music.]
All right, it's time to find out the first person to make it to this season's finale.
Glenn, who is the winner of this challenge? The winner of tonight's challenge and the first person moving on to the finale is All right, it's time to find out the fist person to make to this season's finale.
Glenn, who is the winner of this challenge? The winner of tonight's challenge and the first person moving on the finale is [suspenseful music.]
Melissa.
Yes.
Thank you.
Your evolutionary concept drove a series of great creative decisions, and your character's probably the best realized for this specific challenge.
Great work.
Thank you.
I'm so glad that the judges love my makeup.
I'm so glad that I'm the first one in.
That's, like, such an honor.
Melissa, congratulations on being the first finalist, and, of course, you have also won that incredible trip to visit Universal Orlando Resort and the upcoming Skull Island: Reign of Kong attraction.
I win the prize, and I'm so excited to take my son.
I've never been to Universal Orlando, and I just I can't wait to go.
I am on top of the world.
All right, Glenn.
Who is the second person to make it to the finale? The second person moving on to the finale is Walter.
We thought that your inspiration came through loud and clear, and there were some really cool sculptural shapes, specifically around the eyes.
Thank you.
To be in the finale, it's surreal.
It's crazy.
I am just overwhelmed with how proud I am.
It feels so good.
Congratulations, Walter.
You've also made it to the finale.
Thank you.
All right, we have two artists left, and only one of you can join us in the finale.
So, Glenn, who has earned the last spot? I feel like I have a stronger makeup than Rob tonight, but I don't know if I've done enough to have earned that last spot.
This is, like, the biggest moment of my entire life.
I want my name to be called so badly.
The third and final contestant that will be moving on to the finale is Rob.
[upbeat music.]
The shapes of your sculpture and the various details within it, they were absolutely incredible.
You have a true artistic eye and a gift for sculpting.
Thank you.
This is the biggest moment of relief in my entire life.
Whatever this finale is, I don't really care.
I'm just so excited that I'm in it.
Congratulations, Rob.
Great job.
Thank you.
Unfortunately, that means, Mel, you have been eliminated.
Mel, you definitely delivered tonight, and it made our decision an extraordinarily difficult one.
You have a lot to be proud of.
Thank you.
Mel, you have been so amazing this season, and it's been so great having you here with us, but I have to ask you to please head back to the makeup room and pack up your kit.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
- Good luck, Mel.
- Good luck, honey.
I'm bummed.
I would have loved to be in the finale, but I'm really proud of myself for getting to here.
This experience has proven to me that I can do this.
And I feel really privileged that I got to be part of this competition.
Well, congratulations again to all three of you for making it to the finale.
We have something really big in store for you, with a very special guest: I'm just gonna give you that little tidbit for now before you go home.
Go get some rest because you're gonna need it.
I'll see you in the morning to talk about your final challenge.
- Good night, guys.
- All: Night.
Congratulations.
I want to win this competition so badly, but I'm trying not to get into my head, 'cause I still need to produce one more really great makeup.
- I'm freaking out.
- I'm too tired to freak out.
It doesn't look very realistic.
Simply put, you've nailed it.
Thank you.
McKenzie: Previously on "Face Off" Walter's Death Knight brought him his second win, but Yvonne fell short and was sent home.
And tonight Welcome to the jungle.
What? McKenzie: The final four will fight to the finish.
Looking good.
I don't really like it right now.
I'm drowning in my own terrible ideas.
It's kill or be killed, and I'm a disaster.
You look not so happy.
I'm swinging for the fences, but I may end up going home.
Whew.
Okay.
It all comes down to this.
You've really stepped up on this one.
The profile of this is terrible.
McKenzie: In the end, only one will win a VIP trip from Kryolan Professional Make-up to one of their 85 international locations, a brand new 2016 Fiat 500, and $100,000.
[exciting music.]
This is "Face Off.
" [exciting music.]
[dramatic music.]
This is scary.
[laughs.]
I am so nervous.
We have no idea what's happening.
We're in this uncovered truck, and we're driving through this whole jungle area.
There's a big, exposed body of water, and I'm glad that Walter is on the outside, so if one of us dies, it's gonna be him.
There's a dinosaur dig! [laughing.]
I see, like, these dig spots, and I'm super excited.
So now I'm hoping for something dinosaurs.
This is really cool.
I see McKenzie.
[percussive music.]
Let's do this.
- Hey, guys.
- Hey, McKenzie.
- Hi.
- Hey.
Welcome to the jungle.
[all laugh.]
As you've seen, you've already begun an expedition that will lead three of you to the finale.
And I bet you're wondering where you're headed.
- Yep.
- Both: Yes.
Well, it's a dark and mysterious place, and it's home to one of the largest and most recognizable stars of the silver screen: the legendary King Kong.
- [gasps.]
- What? - [laughs.]
- That's right, guys.
You're all headed to Skull Island.
I am a huge King Kong fan, and it's really cool.
I want to know what we have to do.
This is great.
To get you up to speed, I brought in a very special guest.
He's an executive producer for Universal Creative, and he and his team are bringing King Kong to life in an incredible new attraction opening at Universal Orlando resort in summer 2016 called Skull Island: Reign of Kong.
- What? - That's really cool.
Please give a warm welcome to Mike West.
[applause.]
Thank you, McKenzie.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'm thrilled to be here, and I cannot wait to see what evolves from this challenge.
Me too.
Now, I know that this attraction was a massive undertaking, but what can you tell us about it? Well, this is an intense adventure that will take you to the very depths and terrors of a dramatically themed environment, where you will become part of the next generation of storytelling for the legendary King Kong.
Even before you board these huge expedition vehicles, you'll have to forge through a dense jungle and make your way through a maze of ancient temple ruins.
Now, once you're on board the truck, your mission is to discover species of unknown origin.
You find yourself in a battle with unimaginable creatures of every size and shape before you come face to face with the colossal Kong himself.
- Oh, my God.
- Oh.
[laughter.]
Really cool.
Sounds like too much to handle.
Oh, my gosh.
This attraction sounds so cool.
I can only imagine how much fun the challenge is gonna be.
All right, so can you tell these guys a little bit more about Skull Island's isolation and how that has affected the way its creatures have evolved? While the rest of the planet was covered in a prolonged global winter, superheated thermal vents allowed Skull Island to remain warm enough so that these huge prehistoric creatures could survive, and over the course of millions of years of evolution, they became more intelligent and more aggressive and far more dangerous.
Cool.
All right, guys.
So that bizarre evolution is at the heart of today's challenge.
Your Spotlight Challenge is to select one of the uniquely evolved species from the Skull Island: Reign of Kong attraction and imagine its evolution into an intelligent being.
- Interesting.
- All right.
- Very cool.
- Sounds like fun.
This challenge is really cool.
I'm super excited, and I would love to get one more win before going into the finale.
So, Mike, I hear you have a special prize in store for the winner of this week's challenge.
Indeed, we do, McKenzie.
The winner of this challenge will receive an all-expense paid trip to enjoy Universal Studios and Universal's Islands of Adventure.
And you'll be among the first to experience Skull Island: Reign of Kong.
- Oh, my God.
- So cool.
That's so cool.
I love theme parks.
I've never been to Universal Orlando, and this attraction sounds so awesome.
I really want this prize.
That's so amazing.
Thank you, again, so much.
- Thank you.
- All right, guys.
It's time for you to continue your expedition.
In the jungle around us are several archaeological sites containing fossils that represent some of the creatures from Skull Island: Reign of Kong.
And once you've found a creature you'd like to evolve, go ahead and get started on your designs.
- All right.
- Yeah.
- Great.
- [laughs.]
I will see you guys later on at the lab with my dad.
Good luck out there.
- Bye, guys.
- Bye.
Bye.
[intense music.]
I picked this kind of a multi-animal hybrid.
It looks like a pterodactyl, a bat, and rat mixed all into one.
My creature's arms are part of the wings, and I don't want to do that.
In King Kong, everybody's fighting each other.
So I'm thinking that because of evolution, his wings are now on his back so he can fight with his hands.
If there's one to win, this is the one that I want to win.
There's absolutely no room for error this week.
[intense music.]
My creature, he's got a lot of insect features.
He has an armored back and this armored thoracic piece.
And I want to incorporate more human anatomy so it's more hybrid.
With his evolution, he will walk more upright.
He'll have that silhouette of that hunch, but he won't have all the legs and sort of walk horizontally.
I got a dinosaur hybrid, and it's the largest creature on the island, so I want to do a lot of bigger pieces, like a backpiece with a lot of scaling.
It's evolving and becoming smaller in size, so it's realizing it's not the top of the food chain anymore.
So it's trying to adapt and mimic smaller indigenous people to survive.
I'm trying not to do what I did in the last challenge and that was bite off way more than I can chew, and hopefully everything goes well.
[upbeat techno music.]
There's a lot to work with here.
The creature's got this really cool plated, like, armor, and it's basically a crab-like arachnid.
So I've decided that the creature is a scavenger that lives in caverns.
I'm gonna evolve it so that it's smart enough to set traps instead of outright hunting.
I want to be in the finale.
I you know, we're so close, I can taste it, so I just got to not screw it up.
All right, guys.
Let's pack up and go back to the lab.
We get to the lab, and I would really like to get the face sculpted and done today.
I'm gonna be tying in a higher brow as well as, like, a bat-like nose.
I really want this face to be extremely high detailed, very wrinkly, very cracked skin texture, because that's my style.
That neck looks awesome.
Well, thank you.
[rock music.]
When I'm sculpting the face, I want to do something that's outside my comfort zone.
So I'm sculpting insertion points for the fabricated mandibles, antenna, and mouth pinchers.
These pieces will resemble the original crab.
I want to make it to the end.
I've gotten this far, so I need to push myself to make something truly great and remarkable.
[driving techno music.]
I'm thinking that my face sculpt looks a little cartoony.
There's a smile happening.
And I don't want a big purple dinosaur onstage.
So I start adding a lot of teeth to make it look inherently more fierce.
Once I get the teeth in and some texture going, it actually looks really cool.
I'm hoping once it's applied and painted, it'll look like that and not Barney.
That looks really cool, man.
Thank you.
[techno music.]
Hey, guys, we're here to check in on you.
- Hey.
- Hi.
Tell us about your evolved creature you got here.
So he's basically gonna be a T.
Rex caveman person.
I am gonna be doing a cowl, and if I have time, I want to do flat pieces of scales to bring it all together.
You're really gonna have to pick and choose Yeah.
What's gonna be the most important, and everything else that's exposed, hide.
Yeah.
My plan right now is to just sculpt the face.
Okay.
And have that be the prosthetic.
And then make the cowl and the backpiece and extra legs, and fabricate all that.
Okay, now, what about down around the throat here? What're you going to do? I might just leave the neck You could add clay into this to blend into this, and then you don't have to worry about if the costume doesn't quite cover something.
That'd be good.
Um, just trying to work in the human element with what that thing looks like.
- Okay.
- What about coloring? The coloring is very skin-like, so I'm gonna go in with a peachy or a tan skin tone.
I don't know.
I think tan would be better.
- Yeah.
- You know, stain.
Because this has a lot of yellow undertones to it - Mm-hmm.
- Yeah.
Which would give you that leathery type of look, and then you use that as your under base and come in and do a lot of great shading.
Yeah.
I thought in terms of the evolution to do this sort of multiple eye thing.
So I'd have red scleras, and then these would be red.
So I would have some static eyes, but the main eyes could move and articulate.
Hmm.
That could look like a mask with human eyes behind it.
- This has to really match up.
- Right.
Because if you do a lot of eye makeup here and this is just left with base and a little bit of shadow, it looks like it's an addition.
Right.
Westmore's given me some good advice, but I realize that I not only have four static eyes; I also have a beak, which are all things the judges hate.
I want so desperately to make it to the finale, but I just keep second-guessing myself, and I feel like right now there's no chance I'm gonna get there, and that's a terrible feeling.
Looking good.
I don't really like it right now.
I'm not loving my sculpture.
It looks odd.
I'm having issues with this mouth looking like a beak.
It's just nothing's going right for me today.
It's a really bad time in the competition to be second-guessing myself, but I'm going to have to start over, because it's better to have something I'm proud of than something that's complete that I hate.
[upbeat techno music.]
I'm really taking my time adding a lot of scales that will catch one's eye.
With reptiles and dinosaurs, the scales are on a kind of a grid.
So I draw in a grid of squares, and then I go in, round out each corner, and that creates that leathery reptile skin.
- That is a lot of scales.
- Yeah.
It is taking a little longer than I had anticipated, but it's my first crack at any kind of dinosaur, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job.
As I'm finishing my sculpt, I'm really liking it, but I'm worried that the brows kind of read like ears.
Mel.
Hmm? Do those read like ears? They don't look like ears.
They're great.
It looks great.
I'm super proud of it, and I'm ready to mold.
[rock music.]
Crabs have these unique little bumps and stuff like that, and I really want to bring that in my sculpture, but if I sculpt each bump, I'm gonna go crazy.
So I just push pearls into the sculpture to get that texture.
I'm liking it, and now I feel like I've got a character I can get behind.
How you doing? I'm struggling a bit.
I've been working on the face all day, but I'm still not really happy with what I'm doing.
I just feel like I'm revving myself up so many times with, "This time will be different," and it keeps failing.
So basically, I have nothing to show for today.
That's time! [dramatic music.]
Who needs this day? Who needs day one, right? Not me.
I'm drowning in my own terrible ideas.
So I'm going to have to start over when I come in tomorrow.
I'm feeling stressed but hopeful that what I produce tomorrow will be better than what I've done today which is nothing.
[energetic techno music.]
- Let's do it! - All right.
Yeah.
One, two, three, four We get into the lab, and the first thing I do is go into the mold room and run a slip cast with slip latex into my face mold so that I can have that face to line up to my cowl.
I really like doing that because it helps me line up my brow bones into the ear line, and it just makes everything so much more synchronized, which is really helpful, especially heading into the finale, because everything needs to be as perfect as possible.
[rock music.]
I'm starting over for the second time.
I just rip everything off the face and make a new decision.
It's an evolutionary challenge, so I'm just taking elements from many different bugs and trying to plate them and make them look armored in a cool way on a human face.
I'm just cutting geometric shapes and placing them on the face.
I'll blend them to make them look like part of the insects' anatomy, but I want to be able to move them around freely while I'm figuring out my silhouette.
Starting over is stressful, but I think it was the right choice.
Only three of us are moving on to the finale, and I'm just trying to focus on making sure this face is worth the delay.
Is this better than yesterday? Well, better than yesterday, yeah, 'cause you didn't have anything yesterday.
[techno music.]
I like to come back to a sculpture with fresh eyes and just kind of give it a once-over and see if I need to correct anything that maybe I didn't notice the day before 'cause I was too into it.
So I just added a few sculptural details on the face and textures, and stuff like that, you know, make sure it all looks good, and then off to the mold room.
I want that mold curing, and then while that's curing up, I can start fabricating.
[rock music.]
So for this backpiece, I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from my photos.
The back has a lot of large square scaling that reminds me of a crocodile, so I just mix those two together, and it adds a really cool silhouette.
It arches the back, and it has a lot of cool textures.
I'm trying to sculpt it as fast as I can, because the last challenge was a bit rough in the time management area.
So this is the last challenge before the finale, and I want to make it to the finale, so I'm trying my hardest to do my very best.
[techno music.]
I want to be able to do something huge with wings, because I would really like to be able to just wow the judges.
So I'm gonna build a mechanism where you pull a string and the wings shoot up into the air.
Just to have that whole motion would just be so cool.
So I grab PVC pipe for the armature that it's sitting on.
I grab springs to create the springback motion, [bleep.]
.
[Bleep.]
.
As I'm testing the wings, both of the springs bend.
[suspenseful music.]
I guess I pulled too tightly down when I was testing it.
It's not gonna spring back up with a bent spring, and I don't have time to take everything apart again.
[bleep.]
.
[Murmurs indistinctly.]
I don't know how these [bleep.]
things are gonna work.
It's frustrating, because I'm swinging for the fences, hoping that these wings would get me to the finale.
[grunts.]
But now I think I may end up going home.
[bleep.]
.
[Bleep.]
.
I bent the springs on the wings, so I'm not gonna have the whole mechanized up and down that I really wanted.
At this point, I'm just gonna have the big wings.
They're gonna be static, which is a major bummer, but at the same time, I have to have something, static or not.
Because the wings are really the core of my design, I'm just gonna make it work.
[driving techno music.]
I'm starting to sculpt my cowl, but I realize I'm not gonna have time to do a big two-part mold, so to save time, I basically am creating a three-dimensional pattern on a flat board so that I can do a one-piece cowl that I will wrap around my model's head during application.
I want to fabricate this headpiece, which is basically my substitution for a cowl.
I also need to fabricate his pinchers.
And if I have time, I'd like to do some sort of chest armor.
It's an insane amount of work, but at this point, we really got to step up our game.
Everybody's trying to pull out the big guns.
So I got to bring it.
There we go.
Nya-nya-nyah.
I'm definitely worried about fabricating just because I have no background in it at all.
But my silhouette is not crazy hard to achieve, which is why I feel like I could do it.
I want the fabrication to look like a suited armor with the same sort of silhouette my insect has.
I also want to do the insect butt, so I'm cutting out shapes sort of arbitrarily and seeing if they'll work.
I don't really know how all this works.
It's a lot of duct tape.
Duct tape is the only tool you need for fabrication.
I don't know what everyone's talking about with heat guns and hot glue.
What do you got going on over here? A lot.
That actually doesn't look bad.
Don't want to toot my own fabrication horn, but toot, toot.
I decided to go with latex for the wings, so I draw out the pattern on the floor, and then in certain spots, I'm gonna create those hole textures so that it looks like it's a very battle-worn fabric.
[exhales sharply.]
It not going as fast as I want it to go, and I'm realizing I'm just not gonna have enough time to finish this today.
[bleep.]
.
Man, these wings are just killing me.
That's time, everyone.
[groans.]
Cool.
Why do you look not so happy? I just couldn't really get the things that I wanted to do to work.
I'm really sweating for application, because we're 24 hours away from knowing who the final three people are gonna be, and I still need to finish these stupid wings.
- This is it, the final - Final four.
We're down to the four.
There's only four.
And three get to go on to the finale.
Mm-hmm.
Tomorrow is the application that determines who is going into the finale.
I feel like we're all too nice to think that it is kill or be killed, but that's basically what's happening.
[laughter.]
I just want to win so badly.
It's so crazy that it's this close.
I feel like we've been through war together.
[laughs.]
We have.
[laughing.]
Oh, I so want to get to the finale, but also, I really want to win this prize.
It's something I can do for my son that would be really fun for him.
You guys ready to go home? - Yeah.
- Yes, please.
[laughs.]
[upbeat techno music.]
- All right, let's roll.
- Let's check out this wardrobe.
Nope.
I have a lot of energy this morning, because I have a lot to do and not that much time to do it in.
So I just need to get everything applied as quickly as possible so I have time to paint.
This has to go well for me to make it into the finale.
Yay.
- How's it going, man? - Nice to meet you.
It's super good to meet you.
I'm just spray-painting your butt right now.
How are you? I'm Amber.
I'm Mel.
I like to pre-paint as much as I can, so my model's just gonna have to sit tight, because I'm gonna be painting for the next couple hours.
I'm doing a lot of highlight and shadow because I want it to be dynamic, but from a distance, I'm not sure if it's just reading as a brown.
So I'm hoping yellows, greens, and oranges will all pop it up a little.
I'm feeling stressed but hopeful.
Okay.
I need to make some mandibles.
At this point, I still need to fabricate the mandibles and the pinchers and the antenna for the face piece, and since they're on the face, I want them to look good, and I don't like that I'm putting them off till last.
So I try to quickly bust that out, and then I have to airbrush the patterns on everything.
The paint job is really gonna be what sells this, and I feel that one of my strongest points in this competition is as a painter.
Even though I'm juggling a lot of things at once, it's just a matter of staying on task.
I don't have time to think.
I just have to do.
Thankfully, I finished the wings, but now I have to make up for lost time.
With my paint scheme, I'm keeping it very skin tone-like by doing veining with greens and blues, just to really create translucency in the skin.
My makeup is coming to life, and I'm feeling like I have a chance.
[tense music.]
- I have to start painting.
- All right.
Application's kind of eating away at my time right now, because I had so many pieces to apply, and now I have less than an hour, and I'm just now starting my paint job.
I am so stupid.
There's a lot to paint, and I'm really rushing at this point.
The judges have said that a good paint job can save a bad sculpture.
Mm.
But at the same time, a really crappy paint job can ruin a really nice sculpture, so I'm trying not to panic.
Okay, head up.
So all right.
Ten minutes, everybody! [upbeat rock music.]
That's time! Okay.
It all comes down to this next hour.
Everything's pretty much pre-painted, but I'm still stressed out because I have a lot to get done.
Whew.
Okay.
I want it so bad.
Like, I can almost taste it.
It's [sighs.]
So close.
Semifinals.
This is one of the most important hours of the competition.
There's a lot on the line.
If I screw up, I'm going home.
Okay, we have a lot to do.
I need to get all of the fabricated pieces on him, and then I need to make everything look nice.
Nya-nya-nyah.
[suspenseful music.]
All right, buddy, how's it doin'? I put the wings on him, and then I take the wardrobe and cut it up the back so that he can slip into it, and then I'm just pinning the rest of it back together.
It's super frantic, but I'm trying to get this done.
It gets real in Last Looks.
I have this crown that I'm going to use on the back of the head to cover some parts that are exposed.
This is so janky.
I really want to be in the finale.
I will do whatever it takes, including lots of duct tape.
'Cause if it goes further back, then they're gonna see all that duct tape, and that would be a [bleep.]
nightmare.
Oh, God.
This is not gonna end well.
Time's running out, and I'm a disaster.
Like, I have a little less than 50% of this paint job done.
And grass.
So I just throw some hemp fibers on his arms to make it look like he's camouflaging himself.
This could actually work.
Probably not, but we'll see.
At this point, I don't have any idea how this is gonna be finished.
15 minutes! That's time, everyone! [tense music.]
- You get finished? - Nope.
Time is up.
The sculpture is so good, but the paint job is so bad.
Like, I don't know what's gonna happen.
At this point, I'm just trying to make peace with the fact that I'm probably not gonna get to the finale.
[suspenseful music.]
Welcome to the "Face Off" reveal stage.
As you know, this is our semifinal, and only three of you will secure a spot in this season's finale.
But before we see your creations, let's say hello to our series judges.
Owner of Alchemy Studio, Glenn Hetrick.
- Good evening.
- All: Hi, Glenn.
Oscar and Emmy Award-winning makeup artist Ve Neill.
Good evening, semifinalists.
- Hi, Ve.
- Good evening.
And creature and concept designer Neville Page.
- Hello.
- All: Hi, Neville.
Okay, this week, your Spotlight Challenge was to choose a creature from Universal Orlando Resort's upcoming attraction Skull Island: Reign of Kong and use it to create an intelligent being that might have evolved from it.
And as a reminder, there's an incredible prize on the line tonight: a trip for two to Universal Orlando Resort including airfare, hotel, park passes, and, of course, you'll be among the first to see the all-new Skull Island: Reign of Kong attraction in person.
Very cool.
Without further ado, let's take a look at your creations.
[intense music.]
I think she looks really cool.
She's feminine, even though she's this big, creepy bug.
I don't know what the judges are gonna say, but I'm proud of what I've done today.
Overall, he's looking cool.
He's looking creepy.
But I don't know if this is enough to get me in the finale.
He's got this really unique look that draws your eye in to his face.
I don't know.
I think it's really cool.
I don't like this makeup.
It would definitely suck to be knocked out of the finale on a bad paint job.
All right, judges.
It's time to go take a closer look.
Mel has done a lot of work here.
She's really elegant.
Turn that way so we can look at your tail.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, back to the front.
I really wish this rough shape around the mouth had been synthesized with the performer's face.
[growls.]
[chuckling.]
That's my favorite creature noise ever.
Really nice paint work.
Some good blending down here too.
Yeah.
I think this would have been a lot more successful if they had been folded up on his back.
- Exactly.
- It would have looked cooler.
It would have been faster to do.
There's some really accomplished forms going on through here.
And a whole lot of them to reconcile.
God, she did a lot of stuff and painted everything pretty decently too.
Mm-hmm.
My favorite part of the fabrication is these really working in the third dimension.
[whispers.]
Yeah.
He didn't do well with painting all these horns.
There's one huge mistake, and it's leaving all this exposed, not covering these with anything.
Bringing this stuff up here to cover this would help so much.
This is the most incomplete makeup I've put onstage, and this is the worst time to have that happen.
Why didn't he cover that up? I'm really hoping it doesn't blow my shot at getting to the finale.
Why didn't he cover that up? This is the most incomplete makeup I've put onstage.
I hope they notice that this is a sculpture I'm really proud of and overlook the fact that this is a paint job I'm really not.
Bringing this stuff up here to cover this would help so much.
- Otherwise, gorgeous sculpturing.
- Yeah.
Thank you.
All right, the judges would like to hear from each of you before choosing this season's finalists.
Walter, will you please step forward? [intense music.]
- Hey, Walter.
- How's it going? Tell us about the genesis of your creature.
I wanted him to have evolved for better fighting, so I figured instead of making wings attached to his arms, I would make separate wings so that he could fight with his hands but also be flying at the same time.
It's a really impressive character.
Some of the facial forms of the sculpting, really cool.
I think a couple of dark tones coming around from the back would have helped.
I love that you try to push yourself, that you're swinging for the fences, especially here in the semifinals.
Thank you.
Your character has a lot of nice tones.
I especially like what you did around the eyes, and there's some really beautiful moments, like in the ear, and you have some nice veining going on.
But it would have been better if those wings were not up.
You should have just tied the buggers down.
Yeah.
I think that the most successful thing you've achieved here is the fact that it feels like this could be in the Kong world.
My favorite feature on this guy is definitely the orbital region.
There's some really cool shapes happening there.
I'm glad to see that shadow is highlighting that.
I'm loving what you're doing.
Thank you.
Walter, you can head back.
Mel, please step up.
Good evening, Mel.
Good evening, Ve.
Tell us about your Skull Island creation.
In evolution, they became bipeds, walking on two feet.
So this part is actually fashioned from what they've evolved from.
They've taken that and made it into armor.
Cool idea.
I mean, she's so elegant.
The distance read is a little muddy, facially, but when you get up close, it's nice.
I like the little bits of red here and there.
You've really stepped up on this one.
Thank you.
- This is pretty darn cool.
- Thanks.
The mouth, it's subtle from a distance, but up close, it gets even more appealing.
But if you had maybe broken up the face a little bit with a bit more specularity, that would have helped, I think, showcase more of the beautiful sculptural form you have happening on that face.
Thank you.
The way that your fabrication integrates with the character is gorgeous.
My one tripping point here is the mouth should have been synthesized into the human nature of the performer, but I love the shapes of it.
Thank you.
Mel, please step back.
- Good job.
- Thanks.
Rob, please step to the center.
- Hello, Rob.
- Hi.
Tell us about your concept.
As the creature evolved, it shrank in size, so it adapted to mimicking and camouflaging to survive, basically.
You've really done an exceptional job.
You're so damn good at sculpting.
To have scales morph across a surface from primary to secondary to tertiary, that takes an awareness that is an innate skill set, but watch out for the big shapes, though, because the profile of this is terrible.
Okay.
It's a visual feast.
Delicious sculptural detail, so awesome work there, but when you have a sculpt that's that beautiful with detail, you really need to give yourself the time to allow the paint to help show off how great the detail is.
I just wish you would have brought the wardrobe up to hide some of the sins of the application.
- Other than that, great work.
- Thank you.
I'm sorry that you didn't take your airbrush at the end and just give a couple of little pops on some of that beautiful sculpting that you did.
I really would have liked to have seen it painted beautifully.
Rob, thank you very much.
Please head back.
Melissa.
- Hey, Melissa.
- Hi, Glenn.
Tell us about your concept.
For their evolution, they are scavenger creatures, so they became smarter and started building traps to capture fresh food.
It's a gorgeous makeup.
I think there's a really harmonious balance between the amount of time that you spent fabricating and the amount of time you spent on a makeup.
I wish that those attenuated feelers were in a slightly different position.
They sort of hang down over his eyes.
That's a tiny note on an otherwise great makeup.
This is a pretty cool character.
I especially love the paint scheme.
Really nice colors, With those beautiful warm browns and that little bit of red in there.
All of these beautiful sculptural pieces around the mouth, and it all works.
When he moves, it goes in and out.
Very nice job tonight, Melissa.
Thank you.
There's so much good stuff here.
This chest piece is beautiful in so many ways.
The third dimension coming out is great.
Bottom line, you have a complete character that's aesthetically pleasing.
Very nice work.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone.
Melissa, please step back.
All right, you can all head back to the makeup room while the judges decide who will move on to the finale.
All right, judges.
So you have some big decisions to make.
Why don't we start with Walter? You know, he had some nice vein work in there.
He had some beautiful shading around the eyes.
Some really great stuff over on the sides by the ears.
There's some things about it that I really do like.
I don't think that it's his best effort.
The sculpting got a little soft for my taste.
It's immediately recognizable, and he's very strong conceptually.
This guy has a vision.
That's such an important piece of the criteria moving someone forward to the finale.
All right, let's move on to Mel.
The paint application's very nice.
She's shown beautiful application technique.
I don't love the forms, though.
They're so primary.
I really did like the form language in its simplicity, its uniqueness, and its symmetry.
I felt it was very bold.
This is the best thing she's done on the show yet.
All right, let's move on to Rob.
He had very poor time management.
The paint job is unfinished.
That yellow chest was just blank.
But absolutely gorgeous detailing on the sculpture.
It's unbelievable that someone at his age would have a skill set that allows him to pull off that kind of detail.
The overall shape was more dog-like, but the precision and the definition of the scales astound me.
Until now, his work has been stellar.
So this puts me on the fence tonight with him.
All right, let's move on to Melissa.
The sculpture of the face is gorgeous.
There's so many forms and each of them painted appropriately.
She had a lot of different paint techniques going on, like the dry-brushing and the airbrushing on the chest piece.
That lack of a cowl was incredibly foresightful to know that she was going to be able to pull off the rear and a front, to have the stuff in the middle, the cowl, not even count.
She seems to be getting better every single challenge we put in front of her.
All right, judges.
Have you chosen your final three? We have.
Let's bring them back out.
[suspenseful music.]
All right, it's time to find out the first person to make it to this season's finale.
Glenn, who is the winner of this challenge? The winner of tonight's challenge and the first person moving on to the finale is All right, it's time to find out the fist person to make to this season's finale.
Glenn, who is the winner of this challenge? The winner of tonight's challenge and the first person moving on the finale is [suspenseful music.]
Melissa.
Yes.
Thank you.
Your evolutionary concept drove a series of great creative decisions, and your character's probably the best realized for this specific challenge.
Great work.
Thank you.
I'm so glad that the judges love my makeup.
I'm so glad that I'm the first one in.
That's, like, such an honor.
Melissa, congratulations on being the first finalist, and, of course, you have also won that incredible trip to visit Universal Orlando Resort and the upcoming Skull Island: Reign of Kong attraction.
I win the prize, and I'm so excited to take my son.
I've never been to Universal Orlando, and I just I can't wait to go.
I am on top of the world.
All right, Glenn.
Who is the second person to make it to the finale? The second person moving on to the finale is Walter.
We thought that your inspiration came through loud and clear, and there were some really cool sculptural shapes, specifically around the eyes.
Thank you.
To be in the finale, it's surreal.
It's crazy.
I am just overwhelmed with how proud I am.
It feels so good.
Congratulations, Walter.
You've also made it to the finale.
Thank you.
All right, we have two artists left, and only one of you can join us in the finale.
So, Glenn, who has earned the last spot? I feel like I have a stronger makeup than Rob tonight, but I don't know if I've done enough to have earned that last spot.
This is, like, the biggest moment of my entire life.
I want my name to be called so badly.
The third and final contestant that will be moving on to the finale is Rob.
[upbeat music.]
The shapes of your sculpture and the various details within it, they were absolutely incredible.
You have a true artistic eye and a gift for sculpting.
Thank you.
This is the biggest moment of relief in my entire life.
Whatever this finale is, I don't really care.
I'm just so excited that I'm in it.
Congratulations, Rob.
Great job.
Thank you.
Unfortunately, that means, Mel, you have been eliminated.
Mel, you definitely delivered tonight, and it made our decision an extraordinarily difficult one.
You have a lot to be proud of.
Thank you.
Mel, you have been so amazing this season, and it's been so great having you here with us, but I have to ask you to please head back to the makeup room and pack up your kit.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
- Good luck, Mel.
- Good luck, honey.
I'm bummed.
I would have loved to be in the finale, but I'm really proud of myself for getting to here.
This experience has proven to me that I can do this.
And I feel really privileged that I got to be part of this competition.
Well, congratulations again to all three of you for making it to the finale.
We have something really big in store for you, with a very special guest: I'm just gonna give you that little tidbit for now before you go home.
Go get some rest because you're gonna need it.
I'll see you in the morning to talk about your final challenge.
- Good night, guys.
- All: Night.
Congratulations.
I want to win this competition so badly, but I'm trying not to get into my head, 'cause I still need to produce one more really great makeup.
- I'm freaking out.
- I'm too tired to freak out.