Tonight’s Episode (Airdate March 26th, 2013): Living the Dream
On the season four finale of Syfy’s Face Off, the final three – Anthony, Wayne and Kris – head to Vegas for a showdown at The Wynn that’s all about Living the Dream!
Tonight, the Final Three battle for the win at The Wynne in Las Vegas, where one victor will take it all. At the top of the episode, we are treated to a recap of all the great work that Anthony, Wayne and Kris have completed all season. It sure looks like these guys are the three that were meant to go to the end. This morning, it is time for the contestants to catch up with their loved ones after being out of touch for over two months. In the kitchen of a very quiet house in the Hills of LA, Wayne Skypes with his wife. Anthony has a tearful chat with with his folks, while Kris has his wife and two kids to catch up with. There are some emotional tears, but each guy says this is just a reminder of why they are doing this in the first place.
Final Spotlight Challenge
In the lab, McKenzie meets the artists accompanied by James Santos, Artistic Director of Le Reve The Dream, a show that takes place in the Theater at the Wynne Resort in Las Vegas. This over-the-top aquatic, aerial and acrobatic theatrical production includes over ninety artists and Olympic athletes in the cast. For their final Spotlight Challenge, the three will create two fantasy make-up looks for performers in Le Reve The Dream. One character must be a Dream Thief; a character that “collects dreams in the water” and is described as an “adrenaline junky who cannot get enough danger in [his] world.” A Dream Thief, MacKenzie explains, comes to life in the depths of the subconscious. So, if one character must be a Dream Thief, then the other is a victim who has something the thief wants to steal. Easy enough.
Each finalist must pick a ‘dream theme such’ as gothic, cosmic, whimsical, ethereal or supernatural, to help guide his looks. Anthony picks Sinister, from which he can come up with something mischievous and evil, but also whimsical, which gives him a broad spectrum of expressions to add character to his creature’s face. Wayne says going with Supernatural feels cool to him, because it’s wide open for interpretation. Kris picks Ethereal for its celestial properties that will fit into the Le Reve The Dream show. A huge element that they will have to consider as they work is the water factor, as the set includes a one million gallon tank! The make-ups, therefore, will need to be 100% waterproof. Anthony admits he’s never done waterproof make up before.
Of course, they are each going to need some help with this project, so here come half a dozen of the recently eliminated contestants including Eric Fox, House, Autumn, Meagan, Eric Z and Alam to help them get the job done. Each contestant can choose two people for his team. Wayne immediately chooses Eric F before anyone can nab him, and his second choice is Meagan. Kris picks House and Alam. Anthony gets Eric Z and Autumn.
In the Design Phase, Kris and his team start sketching, each of them working on a design, keeping the Celestial theme and water factors in mind. Their final design looks like an aquatic alien.
Wayne, who has also never done waterproof make up, starts worrying right away. He and his team create the concept of the Dreamer who is an Angel, and her dream is to make it to heaven. The Dream Thief wants to steal that from her and get his own set of wings.
Anthony and his team enter the sculpting phase with an idea to keep everything as minimal as possible and avoid having anything restrictive on the body. The concept is a Sinister Dream Thief trying to lure in and steal the soul of a Princess. He decides on sculpting a cowl face and a minor chest piece. Eric Z is working on the chest pieces and Autumn starts blocking in the cowls. Anthony says he loves her work.
Eric F gets started on the face appliance for Wayne’s Angel and Meagan works on the wings growing out of her back. For the Demon, they’ll go with a face appliance, a cowl and a chest piece. The prosthetic will stop around the nose area to help it remain watertight after application.
On Kris’s team, House works on the Dream Thief’s chest and back, and Alam will work on the sculpt of the female chest piece. Eric F. makes a boob joke.
At the end of Day One, Wayne feels pretty good about who he has on his team.
On Day Two of this four day challenge, they’ll finish their sculpts and go into the molding phase. Kris is so worried about the water aspect of the challenge that he is rethinking everything with regard to his prosthetics. Will all he is doing be enough? He hates this challenge.
Here come McKenzie and Michael for the final walk through and last mentoring session of the season. Anthony feels sad that Mr. Westmore is there for the final time, since he has been a true mentor to them. Anthony explains his full concept using the theme of Sinister and presents his work so far, which is looking good. Michael says to go with the cowl idea but really make sure to glue it down properly, because if any water gets in there, it will turn into a sponge. Anthony appreciates the vote of confidence and he and Autumn are all, “I love Mr. Westmore,” which is kind of sweet.
With Wayne’s team, they show Westmore how they have been doing sample inks on Meagan’s arm to test for waterproof-ness for the Dream Thief character’s tattoos. It looks pretty cool, like she has these rainbow tumors growing up her arm. Michael advises them to be prepared for the warm water in the tank and Wayne confesses that he feels bad that Westmore won’t be around for the rest of his life to advise him on how to have good time management skills. Wayne!
Kris’s looks are sleek and Vegas-y. Michael advises to be sure to make the seals waterproof. Kris asks if using zinc oxide powder around the edges will give him a good bond and Westmore says yes. Kris is also thankful for all of the good advice he has gotten from this obviously much beloved legend of the industry over the season. Bye Westmores! See you in Vegas!
Suddenly, there are only eight minutes left in the day, where did those ten hours go?
Day Three: Anthony has some air pockets in his creature’s face appliance, which won’t work because air pockets could lead to leakage. He has to rerun the foam, but can’t, because the mold has been destroyed! This means he has to completely resculpt the character’s face. Autumn thinks he should just patch it, but then takes a closer look and realizes that it is really beyond repair. What must be done, must be done.
Kris and his team are trying to come up with a unique palette of colors for their paint jobs. Wait until you see what they come up with!
Autumn and Eric are really struggling to get Anthony’s mold open without breaking the mannequin. This is bad news to Anthony, who wonders what else could go wrong. Autumn feels bad that the mold she made has locked up, but fortunately it comes open with just a little damage to the prosthetic. Thanks to great teamwork, day three comes to a close with minimal drama and the group heads to Vegas to complete their looks on Day Four.
As the finalists enter the lobby of the Wynne resort, Wayne remarks how surreal everything feels. And you should see their hotel suite: it is crazy cool! “This suite is pretty sweet,” jokes Kris. With floor-to-ceiling windows all around, each one of the bedrooms is bigger than a normal hotel room, and there’s even a pool table. Too bad they won’t be using it, because they are going to be in the lab the entire time. They toast ‘to the final three’ and may the best man win!
Backstage at the Wynne Theater, they start on applications. Wayne starts sealing his appliances. What’s different about tonight is that instead of working with their usual models, these models are, naturally, all performers from the show. They may be conditioned to perform in this show, but they’ve never had make up like this applied to them before.
Anthony and his team are still laying appliances at the two-hour mark and can’t start on the paint yet. Wayne, as usual, feels far behind compared to everyone else, and he’s anxious to start on his paint job. MacKenzie comes in and announces that they have just one more hour to work, and must hustle to get everything completed. But . . .somehow when time is called, everybody hugs and thanks god, because it all got done. Wayne offers that having their reveal in front of a huge live audience for the first time is very intimidating.
The Reveal
McKenzie walks out onto the stage of the “Beautiful Wynne Theater” to a huge roar of applause and we can see all of the former contestants seated in the crowd. It’s time for Le Reve The Dream, featuring two original fantasy make-ups by each contestant. The first is the Dream Thief and the second is the victim who has something the thief wants. She reveals to the audience that each artist also followed a dream theme to guide them in their creations for tonight’s performance. The judges are introduced: Hello again, Glenn, Ve and Neville.
Kris and team Ethereal are up first and here’s what they dreamed up. The female character’s body-sculpt gives a nude silhouette to her look, with fluorescent yellow body paint highlighted with bright orange details. She looks ‘black light ready.’ The male Thief has a full body metallic silver paint finish that looks sleek and amazing. The male’s head sculpt also has some fun, angular details. This is one of the best paint jobs from Kris this season, for sure.
Anthony’s Sinister creations go very well together and have a cohesive, thematic feel. They each have a pale white paint job (think: fish belly white) so they look like water creatures. The Dream Thief looks appropriately Sinister. “Whatever happens in the water is gonna happen in the water,” he concludes.
Wayne’s supernatural creations look great from far away but he worries about how they’ll bear up under close scrutiny. He created some unique details on the body sculpt and the paint just looks flesh colored, though he did some nice veining detail on the male.
The judges come up to the stage for closer looks before the performance starts. It stands out how Kris was the only one who did any kind of bold color on his creations. Neville likes the detail on the female’s back. Glenn says he ‘gets’ the aquatic approach. Glenn also likes the metallic paint on the male and Ve notes that everything is well blended. Neville calls it fantastic!
For Anthony’s female character, Neville declares it to be his absolute favorite profile. Ve likes how the entire chest piece is a prosthetic. Glenn also agrees that the profile is very natural-looking and he “can believe this thing exists somewhere.” They also really have a lot of raves for the male look. Ve thinks he looks like he’s made out of stone and Glenn calls him Gargoyle-like. Neville thinks the two characters look like they could be related. They both love the shape of the head on the female and the paint job.
When they get to Wayne’s Angel, Glenn says her eyes look a bit “compressed” and the model confesses that she can’t open her eyes all the way. Ve says the vestigial wings on the back are her favorite part. For the Dream Thief, they call the make-up “interesting” and “surprising,” which could mean anything. But they really like the level of detail of the sculpture and particularly seem fascinated with the male’s horns that go front-to-back over the skull and then seem to disappear into the back of the head. Glenn thinks it’s strange, but Ve likes it.
Now it’s time to put all of that hard work to the test as MacKenzie announces the start of the show. “Oh no, here we go,” Wayne cringes.
OK, let me tell you that if you dig the Big Rock Shows and Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas, this Le Reve The Dream show is a pretty big psychedelic acid trip. You can see why the paint did not need or be very vibrant on the bodies of these performers because the colored lights going on are out of control. I’d say it makes Pink Floyd’s laser light spectacular look like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree before the Holiday Spirit brought it to life. If you find yourself in Las Vegas, and can only see one show, I say skip Def Leppard’s residency at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and check this out instead, because it is just insane. Everybody is totally digging it.
And…it looks like all of the make-ups held up in the water! Great success!
Judgment Time
Now, in an empty theater, Glenn announces that this performance was one of the coolest things he’s ever seen. Ve congratulates everyone that the make-ups looked as good coming out of the water as they did going in. Neville says that they all did a phenomenal job. So far, so good.
Kris is up first to speak about his work. His creatures were water Celestials. The female has beautiful dreams and the Thief is there to steal them. Glenn thinks that the silver paint was an excellent choice to encapsulate the Ethereal concept, but what he did on the female model seemed disconnected by comparison. Still, the paint jobs stood out as being uniquely Kris. Ve thinks everything was very clean and when the lights hit the silver figure, it was fabulous. Neville says the sculpt on the male face was the perfect blend of hard and soft and that it was “so beautiful.”
Anthony is up next, explaining his Sinister characters. His Dream Thief has had his identity and soul ripped from his chest, so he needs to steal the soul of a Princess. He wanted to go with two opposite ends of similar characters, the female being soft with rounded features and the male having jagged and angular features. Ve says he did a great job in making the characters look like they belonged together. She especially liked the ‘absolutely gorgeous’ paint job on the Dream Thief. Neville again says that he found the princess’s profile to be perfect and the head shape was beautifully balanced. Glenn says that she looks very feminine and beautiful but “in an Alien way” – and accomplishing that at Anthony’s level is quite impressive.
Wayne steps forward to talk about his Supernatural Angel and Demon concept. The Angel’s developing wings are what the Dream Thief wants to steal. Neville says that they make a great team as characters that felt like they were related to one another. Neville says that the male sculpt was beautifully detailed and very organic. Glenn agrees: there were many things that went right, especially on the Demon character. He loves the back of the female as well, which was very well-executed sculpturally. Ve chimes in her agreement that the characters are well-suited to each other. She also really enjoyed how the horns on the male went back into the skull.
The entire cast has been listening to what the judges have to say and they all give the finalists an enthusiastic and heartfelt round of applause as they head back stage so that the judges can make their final decision.
As they start deliberating, Glenn offers that Kris’s characters were the only ones that were instantly identifiable as being his creations. They like that he went bold with the colors and that he infused a lot of originality into the challenge. Of course, they rave on about the silver paint job and the sculptural detailing in both characters.
On Anthony’s, they loved that the female has no hair and yet she was still beautiful. The sculpture was subtle and natural. Glenn says that the way he ‘reined in’ the proportions shows he was listening and paying attention to the notes he’d been given all season. Neville says that the characters are fully usable and Glenn says it was the definition of what Sinister is.
The first compliment they have for Wayne is that he is such a good sculptor. Not just the surface of the sculpting, but the surface on the ‘big forms.’ Glenn also remarks that his painting skills have improved since coming to the show, as the decision to paint veins on his Demon was a huge step. Ve says it was ‘a coup’ to have embedded the horns into the demon’s head. What stands out most for them is that, in the judge’s collective knowledge of character design, they had never seen that type of horn detail done before.
The contest was a close one, but they have made their decision.
For Kris, they liked that he stepped outside the box and they loved his silver character. For Anthony, they loved the immediately recognizable harmony between the characters, and the profiles were quite striking. For Wayne, he again impressed them with his very original sculpting ideas and clearly cohesive characters. It does seem like it could be anybody who takes this thing, but . . .the winner is . . . Anthony!
MacKenzie hands him the keys to his new Fiat 500, which is part of his prize package as well as the $100,000 cash. Anthony, who did really earn and deserve this victory, says it is surreal as he stands on top of a raised fountain platform stage in a huge empty arena with confetti pouring down on his head. Surreal yeah, good call.
Of course, the runners-up get final words as well. Kris says he was honored to be part of the finale with Wayne and Anthony. He says it was the ‘best experience.’ Wayne also says the competition means lot to him because he did things he did not think he could do and proved to himself that he’s in the right business. Anthony says that they all worked really hard, so for him to come out on top among so many great artists was truly an honor, and made him even more proud. Everybody hugs and high-fives as we end a fantastic season with a huge love fest. Thanks for reading!
“Cheers!”
The episode recaps of SyFy’s Face Off Season 4 were originally written for the website, Redesign Revolution. As that site has gone offline, this article has been added into the historical archive of the Worley Gig for all of our readers to enjoy.
Official Website: https://www.syfy.com/
Official Series Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_Off_(TV_series)