Face Off – Someone can’t have her (cup)cake and eat it too

If there’s one artist I’ve always been fond of, it’s Tim Burton. (Combine Mr. Burton with my love for Vincent Price and I get all swoony.) Knowing Burton and his creations were the influence for this episode of Face Off, I was understandably in anticipation of seeing what the contestants came up with.

Concepts and drawings in hand, everyone gets to work after a little inspirational visit to L.A.’s Watts Towers. Of the designs the guys came up with — Beki’s baker, Matt’s ice cream man, Rayce’s cello dude, RJ’s bellhop, Sue’s toymaker and Ian’s plumber — I want to call out the “fight” between Matt and Rayce’s characters.

While I appreciated Rayce’s musical concept and completed character (music lover than I am), I would totally love to put together and wear Matt’s “wafflecone-headed” ice cream creation for a Halloween costume. The detail was incredible. Precise. The candy sprinkles on his forehead and lips were especially reminiscent of a masquerade costume I made one year that looked as if I had been out in freezing temperatures during the night — ice crystals and icicles hung from my nose and chin and hair, my clothes were frozen to my body and I looked blue and frost-bitten. So it was this that inched me over more so to Matt, wanting his character to emerge victorious rather than Rayce’s. But the judges had other ideas.

Wasn’t it nice to see Beki hit the road, Jack? It certainly was for me. I’ve admired some of her work, but, witnessing her bad attitudes week to week, her haughtiness and unwillingness to play nice with others, I was glad to see her get the boot for not making more of what she should have with her baker creation, concentrating on the cupcake her baker held rather than the actual baker itself.

So long, Beki.

Notes:

• Putting the remaining contestants alongside the Watts Towers in L.A. for inspiration was a bit of a stretch for me. These guys have imaginations — they’re quite capable of coming up with concepts that are doable, especially with the episode’s given subject. But it appears I was incorrect in at least one case as Matt took the Towers’ personalities as the basis for part of his ice cream man’s designs. This is probably why I am not a make up artist. *hehehehe*
• Catherine O’Hara was the guest judge this week, she of the voice of Sally (and Shock!) from Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Mar 01, 2012 @ 12:50 EST5EDT