S07.E12: Off With Their Heads

[Kaoteek]

Just like many in this topic, the first thing that came out of my mouth when Sasha got eliminated was "FINALLY !".

 

Man, that Athena/Medusa combo was dreadful. Not that George's was much better : I like the guy, but he's somewhat limited in his sculpting & painting skills, w/ this Saroumanish Zeus, & last week's awful jock goblin. He's probably the next one to leave, barring another contestant's catastrophic technical failure.

 

As for the top looks, yeah, Dina was indeed the clear winner, with noone coming close.

 

Next week being post-apocalyptic fairies, she might be able to pull it off once again...

Edited October 9, 2014 by Kaoteek

[snakenax]

My feeling since the beginning was that we were either headed toward Cig/Dina/Stella or Cig/Dina/Drew as the final 3.  But I'm often bad at predicting these things.

I think one of those two is basically certain, unless George is saved by someone having a catastrophe.

 

Now the winner is the interesting question to me. I'm betting it will really come down to Cig vs Dina and their styles couldn't be farther apart. Though if it's standard finale type for the show where the piece has to be able to be put under heavy stress in dance/action sequence/whatever I could see Cig being at a disadvantage, he tends to sculpt big and immobile(Roy and Tate were killed in the season 5 finale by the same issue).

[aradia22]

 

Apollo wasn't the god of medicine, Asclepius was.

Apollo is definitely also a healer god. It's not what he's primarily known for but it's part of his bio. Then again, that's the difficulty with Greek mythology. Our modern concept folds in all the beliefs of smaller sects and some gods get attributes from primordial deities, etc. etc. When you're telling a story, or designing a makeup, you basically just pick and choose what you want to include and ignore.

[Latverian Diplomat]

In at least some versions, Medusa's head wound up on Athena's shield. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis

[morakot]

 

She went to a charter school for people interested in an artistic profession, so the curriculum is likely to have been light in some areas considered part of the "well-rounded" education offered by traditional schools.

 

 

You would think that, with all the references in the history of art and music, that mythology would be mentioned in some of the courses (or it was, and she was day dreaming)...

 

And Asclepius, as son of Apollo, took on his father's patronage of healing and made it his specialty.

[micat]

It was time for Sasha to go - that concept was just awful. She said she didn't know anything about Greek gods, but it was actually like she didn't know anything about gods in general. Yeah right: Athena brought low by Medusa.  I guess if I wanted to think up an excuse, then maybe she thought Medusa and Athena were equals, and therefore Medusa could still beat Athena even after being beheaded? But no matter how you look at it, her problems stem from her ignorance.  My favorite book as a child was D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths (and it's part of my gift at every baby shower where books are requested) so I may have taken this challenge very seriously!  Which leads to my second disappointment: when the challenge was presented, Mackenzie said that the severed head should be of a mythical monster the god had defeated. So, there I was, waiting to see their renditions of a hydra head, or a minotaur, or a harpie, or any other of the innumerable awesome Greek monsters.  Instead they just seemed to take that directive as an opportunity to come up with their own monsters. Sigh. Actually only Sasha used a classical Greek monster - as awful as her Medusa head turned out, I guess we can be thankful it was not another cyclops.

 

All that being said, I am glad Sasha was saved for the sole reason that her clown doll was completely amazing.

 

I wonder if the producers cringed a bit at the timing of this episode. I'm sure they conceived the challenge and shot the episode before real-life beheadings became such a constant news story, but the fact that it aired now - yuck.  I had to take a moment and mentally set aside real-world events in order to enjoy it.

[LoneHaranguer]

 

You would think that, with all the references in the history of art and music, that mythology would be mentioned in some of the courses (or it was, and she was day dreaming)...

I don't know about Sasha's school, but around here there's a definite difference between schools that prepare students for college vs going directly into a profession. While I'm sure she would have learned about famous works of art, concentration would have been on the practical aspects of doing similar work herself, rather than going into detail about their background and influences.

[Florinaldo]

Just like many in this topic, the first thing that came out of my mouth when Sasha got eliminated was "FINALLY !".

My sentiments exactly.

 

You would think that, with all the references in the history of art and music, that mythology would be mentioned in some of the courses (or it was, and she was day dreaming)...

They all have tablets at their disposal and usually do research; could she not take the time to get a sense of at least the basic elements of the mythological characters involved? I she did, she obviously understood very little of it.

 

If she expects a job in fantasy make-up field, she will need to brush up on the major Western mythologies which most often turn up in commercial movies. Unless she ends up not being a designer but just a subordinate.

[Bella]

If she expects a job in fantasy make-up field, she will need to brush up on the major Western mythologies which most often turn up in commercial movies. Unless she ends up not being a designer but just a subordinate.

 

I doubt she will ever be in a leadership position. She just doesn't have the personality for it. As for being on a creative team, if there are brainstorming sessions, when will she mature to the point where she's confident tossing out her own ideas and explaining them in a coherent manner? She's too much of a snowflake - the team leader would have to play 20 Questions with her. I hope she gets it together, because she does have some great ideas at times. But as you note, her foundation is lacking.

[Biosynth]

Why wouldn't George  craft a lightening bolt for Zeus to hold?  Seems kind of simple.  I felt bad for the model who flung his arm out to look like he was shooting a bolt. 

 

I was amazed when Sasha said she didn't know much about the Gods.  What?  Ok, so I'm not in school right now (I'm 48) and I went to a prep school in High School but we still learned about the Ancient Pantheon, at least the key players.  But having said that, at 48, I make an effort to constantly try to learn things.  Lately my favorite has been Prehistoric Mega Fauna (primarily elephant ancestors as well as hooved carnivores.)  Maybe I'm a nerd that way, but I find it beneficial to focus on learning new things.  Sasha would be well served if she picked a few subjects and read up on them, just in general.  Someone is going to tell her, at a job, "make me X" and unless she has google at hand, she's going to be screwed.

 

Couldn't she have put an owl face on an armor breast plate?  Athena also is the patron Goddess of Wisdom (a wise Goddess would not have been turned to stone by Medusa's severed head) hand crafts (weaving and such) and of military valor.  There are a lot ways to go here.  And a lot of times she is depicted with her helmet perched on the top of her head.  Sasha could have used the ill fitting helmet that way too.  *slaps forehead*.

 

Hades...not evil.  Sure, he's king of the underworld but its my impression that he's a bit solemn, not ring wraithy.

 

And this was bugging me too, No, the titans didn't get sent to some bubbly under water prison thingy....they were sent to Tartarus, a place of absolute darkness and despair.

 

Oh, and Apollo, looked ok, though Cig made him look a bit more like Aries/Mars to me.

 

I too was looking forward to a severed Minotaur head or hydra or chimera.  Oh well.

[LoneHaranguer]

 

Someone is going to tell her, at a job, "make me X" and unless she has google at hand, she's going to be screwed.

Sasha will be fine working for someone who wants things their way, and will very likely hand her sketches. That will also keep her from being frozen with indecision about what to make (when she has too many ideas) or bringing back something too wild.

[Kromm]

Although you otherwise wouldn't confuse the two, in terms of her makeup aesthetic and application, Dina is kind of the second-coming of Laura Tyler to me.  Great, great, great work.

[niklj]

George's makeup seemed particularly pointless. If a producer wanted an older guy to play Zeus, he could simply cast an older guy, not hire a younger man and then stick an old guy face on him, along with some awfully done armor. I would think a makeup should create or add something not ordinarily available by casting.

This is why I actually appreciated George's makeup. It was that kind of practical make-up that would most likely be used nowadays--think of Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button or any movie where the actors are supposed to age dramatically. I miss those kinds of challenges which made the contestants work on more realistic things like bruising or disguises; sure, it's probably not as dramatic which is why they don't do it anymore, but it's really interesting seeing how makeup can simply transform people.

[Jynnan tonnix]

On 10/10/2014 at 12:36 PM, LoneHaranguer said:

Sasha will be fine working for someone who wants things their way, and will very likely hand her sketches. That will also keep her from being frozen with indecision about what to make (when she has too many ideas) or bringing back something too wild.

Could be, but given the number of times she specifically veered away from doing something in the way it was presented, I also think she has a bit of a masked contrarian attitude in her. She actually reminds me a bit of myself - especially of the "me" I was in the 1980's. Extremely lacking in self confidence and assertiveness, yet inwardly seething if I had to accept authority. Heck, at least she is working toward something she has a passion for. My parents would not agree with sending me to art school, which was, by far, the field I would have been best suited for, but I ended up with a pointless BA in psychology which I pretty much wanted nothing else to do with, ever, by the time I graduated. So I'll give her that.

Since I'm posting for the first time years late to the party, I'll add that I see her as having probably been an exceptionally pretty little girl - she has the sort of rather sharp features as an adult which often come across as just very finely sculpted in young children, so she probably got used to using her looks and "helplessness" to get what she wanted. She's still young enough that it sort of works, but her face is settling more into a less "pretty" and more "striking" cast, so unless she finds a new way of dealing with the world it's not going to work in her favor much longer. She is still quite young (or was...we're a few years on now), so hopefully she'll adjust.

Lastly, I think that, given the fact that she & George were pretty much tied as far as worst makeups this week, even though she'd had more successful pieces over the course of the season, it was too risky to keep her on given that she'd have every chance of making the finale and having an epic meltdown. This way, George is almost guaranteed to be eliminated next week, probably followed by Drew. Cig and Dina are pretty much sure to come up with some pretty impressive work, and both Stella and Drew are consistent enough that whichever of them makes it as the third they are likely to do decently well.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Jynnan tonnix