Previously, on Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge...
No. Abort.
Creating these creatures is very exhausting.
It's hard to be cut away from your family.
Whoa. Whoa.
No one's listening to me.
This week's winning creature designer is Ben.
Thank you very much.
Jake and Russ... We felt your creature was the least successful this week.
Brian, before you announce who's eliminated,
I've just been told one of the creature designers
has something to share.
I don't want to take this opportunity
away from anybody else here,
so I'm gonna have to bow out.
- This week... - Create and build
a fantasy creature who has been slain
and is now mounted on a wizard's wall.
Mechanization is tough for me.
Ah, why isn't this working?
I'm kind of struggling a little.
You've got a lot of work to do.
I hate to tell you.
We have a surprise guest.
What? That's Donald Faison!
How freaking cool is that?
[Dramatic music]
♪ ♪
☯Synced & Corrected by Seppuku17☯ ❃www.addic7ed.com❃
- [Indistinct chatter] - [Laughter]
Hello.
As we come around the corner,
there are taxidermy busts covering this wall.
All right, well, I'll just take six.
[Laughter]
It's a bunch of foam heads, different creatures,
and all we could think of was,
"What the hell are they gonna have us do with these?"
- Hey. - Hey.
- Gather round. - All right.
Huddle up. Huddle up.
Creating a great creature
comes with a great story.
And this week what we want you to do
is bring your creature to life with humor.
Your creature brief this week
is to create and build a fantasy creature
who has been slain
and is now mounted on a wizard's wall.
[Laughter]
Your creature is going to be coming back to life
to tell us how it died
and how it feels about its fate.
[Laughter]
You only have three days for this build.
We want you to integrate hand puppetry
and at least one element of mechanization.
You spent the first few challenges
working in teams.
Well, this week you'll be solely responsible
for your own creatures.
- Oh, wow. - Mm.
I'm excited to work on my own, finally.
It'll be fun to see everyone work on their own
and see where their talents lie.
Ben, you won last week's build,
so you get to choose your core first.
[Laughs]
Jake.
Oh, shut the hell...
No!
Of course Jake chooses the bear.
The bear is like a perfect base,
especially if you want to do a bulkier, bigger character.
Robert, you're up next.
I got to go with the warthog.
Oh. All: Nice.
Melissa?
- [Imitates sheep bleating] - [Laughter]
- Ivonne? - You took my bear.
[Laughter]
- Honey badger. - Hey.
Russ, moving on to you.
Go big or go home, right?
- Oh! - [Laughter]
And finally, Lex.
[Laughs]
The shop master this week is the creature shop's
creative supervisor, Pete Brooke.
Yay.
Pete is an amazing guy, extremely creative.
You couldn't ask for anything better.
- [Applause] - [Laughs]
These cores are just gonna be
the bases of your sculpture.
And then at the end of today,
we're gonna have a team of professional mold makers come in
and mold and cast your finished designs.
Brian and I and the judges
will see you in three days
at the Wizard's Mansion.
- Good luck, guys. - Thanks. Have a good one.
Well, let's get to work, eh?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
After the brief,
I jump right into the sculpting process.
I don't do any sketches.
I have my character in my head,
and I'm ready to get him out in clay.
I plan on doing a troll for this challenge.
I'm choosing to do a troll just because
they are absolutely my favorite mythical creature.
There are so many different kinds,
and there's no defined look as to what a troll can be.
I'm really excited about this challenge.
My creature... I've decided he's going to be an old man,
and he's a tree, basically.
I'm kind of a geek for wood grain
and, you know, that kind of texture.
I'm not doing a sketch for this project.
I have an idea in my head of what I want to do,
and I'm essentially gonna sketch in clay.
We grab our books,
and then I make a quick sketch.
My creature story is, he's a predator,
he doesn't really hide, and he's not scared of anything.
This challenge was a great opportunity,
'cause, finally, we get to do our own thing,
so you either put out or get out.
[Chuckles]
I did pick the biggest head,
and I picked it for a reason.
My motto this week is "Go big or go home."
My creature is essentially the minotaur.
I do have a love for Greek mythology
and the stories behind, you know,
some of those characters.
I'm gonna have a lot of fun with it.
I get the boar's head,
and I want to sculpt kind of more
of a camel-esque type of a creature.
I want him to be more of a hippie.
I think that'll be kind of fun and funny to work with.
I want to have a lot of texture and detail in the face
to really bring the character to life.
So, to pull this off,
I draw a grid system on my creature
so that I know where all the wrinkles are gonna be.
Once I get that set, then I start adding
little pieces of clay in those specific areas
to really give the detail that I want.
I'm assuming you're doing fur.
Yeah. So that's why I'm like,
"I know I can't judge anything off your sculpture."
I'm really excited.
Most of this is right up my alley.
It's the stuff that I do all the time.
My creature is a big, kind of mean
chupacabra/hellcat thing.
The reason I pick the lion
is because the lion has forward-facing eyes.
I'm really new to mechs.
I don't really know what I'm doing.
I want to have a chance to get something
that's looking forward and focused.
Hopefully, I can make the character
just slightly goofy as well.
I, myself, have never personally written any comedy.
So, hopefully, my performer will pick up on it.
My character is a sea serpent,
and he's gonna be, like,
the Loch Ness monster's cousin.
Guys, only five minutes now.
Five minutes till the mold makers get here.
- Whoo! - Thank God.
[Laughter]
The seam can honestly be straight in the center
if you want to do a straight line on it.
- Cool. - We turn the sculpts
over to our mold makers.
Our heads will be cast out of latex and polyfoam.
It'll be very squishy and malleable.
So, hopefully, we'll be able to mechanize it,
and it'll be a great puppet.
The only areas I'm really worried about...
this big nose and these weird kind of...
whatever these are.
No problem. I'll take care of you.
All right, man. Thank you so much.
- I trust what you're doing. - Oh, yeah.
Yay, I appreciate that.
- Awesome. - [Indistinct chatter]
Whoo-whoo! All right.
When we left yesterday, I had my sculpture completed.
The mold makers came in, and I left it in their hands.
Very nice. - All right.
- Nice. - [Chuckles]
- All right.
- How does it look, Jake? - Oh, it's spot on, man.
It's perfect.
Since this week we're just sculpting a head,
it's all about the details.
It's not so much about the overall form.
It's about bringing the character to life.
Today I really want to get the eye mechanism put together.
I want to get the eyes painted and installed
into the mechanism.
Today is for all the grunt work,
all the stuff you don't really want to do,
but you have to do,
so that you can do the fun things tomorrow.
Mechanization is tough for me.
I haven't had much experience with it.
I'm struggling, for sure, to get these things together.
Where did you get things like these and these and this?
Looking at Lex,
I don't think she really knows what she's doing.
And then she's never touched a servo,
so she's gonna be struggling.
If you just get your outrigs set
and fit 'em and then just go over there...
I think the others have at least
seen how mechs work before and seen them in things.
I don't know. I've never done that.
This is something I need to be concerned with, huh?
Air bubbles and looping in plastic?
I'd just fill it with superglue.
All right. [Chuckles]
Day two unofficially became eyeball day.
I'm gonna be asking Robert, for sure,
because the last two times that I've worked with him,
he worked on the eyes.
You're gonna want to cut out some of that,
- so your eyeball... - Gotcha.
- Yeah. - Aw, why?
If I can get the rest of it done,
I'll go back and mess with it.
This is already going quicker.
My competition this week is definitely Robert.
He's well rounded in this area as well,
and he's a great sculptor
and knows how to mechanize very well.
We'll have to cut it out and make it fit.
- At least it's in here. - Yeah.
This is gonna be a much different deal.
He's gonna be tough to beat.
Hey, guys, one hour left in this workday.
[Groans]
My skull is too small for this mount.
I'm, like, trying to figure out how I can make my head work
around these mechanics that are not meant
for something so small.
Could you make smaller eyes?
- I have the smallest. - Oh.
Mm.
I had to either drop one of the eye mechs
and just have one blinking eye
or try to see if I can get 'em both in there
by completely destroying the sculpture.
What the hell? Why isn't this working?
Coming up on Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge...
I'm drowning.
You've got a lot of work to do.
I might have to scrap the eyes altogether.
- Aah! - Aah!
[Laughter]
You put on camera
a creature that was completely unfinished.
[Groans]
My skull is too small for this mount.
In order for the eyes to work,
I'm gonna have to completely destroy the sculpture.
At this point, I'm just worried
that I won't be able to present something... finished.
Hey, guys, ten minutes left, ten minutes.
It took me all day, man. That sucked.
The servos are done.
I struggled for a good, long time
trying to get those things to work.
All right, everybody, that's time.
I don't know why I'm high-fiving you.
I have nothing to high-five about.
I'm disappointed in the lack of work.
I'm just gonna have to have
a really good game plan for tomorrow.
You mean the fairies didn't come in
- and take care of this? - [Laughter]
Lots to do.
It's day three, and our challenge
is to create the head of a creature
that is mounted on a wizard's wall
that he has brought back to life.
I'm feeling real good today. I'm having a lot of fun.
I have a very, very organic sculpture
that has all kinds of lines and movement.
It's a tree, you know? It's bark.
Today I'm essentially assembling everything.
My creature is a minotaur.
I'm actually gonna dumb down his fierceness
by turning his horns downward.
His ears will be downward.
Everything is going to show. This is Russ in a cow.
There's a few other designers that have concerns.
Ivonne has completely had to re-create her creature.
Melissa and Lexie are spending too much time
on those damn mechanisms.
[Sighs] I just wish they would just drop
what they were doing and press on.
They're not gonna have enough time
to finish their creature,
and that's just gonna be bad for everyone.
- [Laughs] - [Laughs]
- Hi, Pete. - Melissa.
How are you?
- I'm drowning. - You're drowning?
- Yeah. - Okay, who's your character?
He's going to be from the sea,
so very sea serpent-y.
Tell me where you're at so that I can help you.
The thing that killed me yesterday was the eye mechs.
The amount of eyelid you've got here...
- Uh-huh. - Is too much.
You're gonna have to cut the back off.
Oh, okay. I'm gonna be removing all of this.
It's going over this neck that I've made
because it's in the shape that I want to mount it.
Okay, have you got time to do that?
Um, I sure hope so.
I mean, pick your battles here.
- Yeah. - You do have your work cut out,
- but we're gonna be rooting for you. - Thank you.
- So his name's Jasper. - All right.
So he's, like, the party planner for the wizard, right?
And he's been around, like, since the '60s,
like 60 AD, right?
Okay, so he's a swinger.
I'm looking at him now.
And you know what I'm gonna say, don't you?
They're a little off.
It was either I could mess around with it forever
and not get anything done
or just get him in and just get a complete character.
It was a double-edged sword.
I'll tell you what... you'll feel the end
of that sword when Brian says,
"This character never looks at me."
I dearly hope that you have some time today
just to address the eye situation.
- How are things? - Not good at all.
What's the character?
Well, he used to be a vicious creature.
But now when he wakes up in this room,
he's gonna look really pathetic, like sad.
The mechs are huge,
so my sculpt actually has to be altered now.
Yeah, well, that's just the way it is.
I've dealt with this type of a situation professionally
several times.
Are you gonna cover this with fur?
Yeah, I am gonna modify the whole head.
That might give you a little bit of a chance to rectify it.
I'm just gonna push through and see how far I can get.
- Go for it. - Thank you.
- I'll see you later. - Thank you so much.
Wow. You've painted the skin already.
Yeah. Got it painted.
I'm fitting it for the under-skull right now.
I'm looking at this part of your skull.
That would be static.
But here, where the muzzle is flexible
and where you can get a lot of performance out of...
out of... you know, a lot of
- stuff out of the muzzle. - Awesome point.
Otherwise, all you're gonna get is that.
Got ya.
So let's have a look.
I get some really awesome bonus movement
from this whole mouth area.
This is all soft, soft foam.
You see the way I painted the eyes?
He's, like, crazy old man kind of thing.
Yeah, that doesn't alarm me.
I'd love for this guy to look at me once in a while.
You don't know which eye to look into.
It sort of works,
- but if it doesn't work... - [Blows raspberry]
His note is that the eyes don't focus.
What I'm gonna have to do
is split that movement up between two joysticks now
to make sure I can look at the camera.
So tell me about his character.
He used to be this, like, big, tough troll
that everyone feared and everyone was afraid of.
But now he's just the wizard's key holder.
So he's gonna have a ring of keys hanging off of his horn.
Spent most of the day yesterday
working on the eye mechanisms and getting those working.
I hope you have enough time to put in those little elements
of detail, like hair and ears and maybe hair around here.
- Yeah, of course. - Stubbly kind of hair,
whatever you want to choose to do.
You are a good sculptor. There's no two ways about it.
Thank you. That means a lot.
Yeah, you're great at what you do.
Take me through what you've got going on here.
This is a big, snarly, evil-looking character
the comedy's going to be in the really pathetic, crap death
that this thing goes through.
I've never done mechs before, and I'm...
you know, I'm kind of struggling a little.
Let's have a look.
I think that's the good one there.
Okay, you might just need to cut...
- Oh, yeah. - A little piece off there.
- See where it's hitting? - Yeah.
You are very well aware, I'm sure,
- that this is the final day. - Yes, I am.
You've got a lot of work to do, I hate to tell you.
Yeah, I know.
I'm just kind of lost as to what to do.
I'm trying to get the eyes in right now.
If that doesn't happen within the next hour,
I'm just gonna try and make something pretty.
I think I might have to scrap the eyes altogether.
Really good, though.
[Tool whirring]
- It looks great, though, dude. - Thank you.
- I'm having fun now. - [Laughs] Good.
My toughest competition right now is definitely Robert.
Robert is a fantastic artist,
and he's in his element right now.
There might be a couple of ways
that I might be ahead of the game,
and that would be that my character
has a lot of movement.
Robert's looks fantastic, but it only
has mouth movement and eye blinks.
If Ben wins another challenge,
I think he would love that.
He's really good at what he does,
but I think I'm gonna take this one this week.
Ooh.
- [Object clatters] - Oh.
- [Bleep]. Sorry. - No worries.
We've literally got two hours left.
I have a lot of work to go over the fur.
I don't think this thing's gonna get finished.
My best hope is to get the fur on there
and to get some airbrushing on it,
because right now it looks like a giant teddy bear.
There is so much to get done.
I haven't even figured out what fur I want to use.
I am bracing myself
to be crucified onstage.
I'm a mess right now.
I have to make this creature actually look
like it's one piece,
and I have to put that all together,
because if I don't have anything to paint in a few hours,
I really am gonna be at the bottom of the barrel.
Coming up on Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge...
Holy crap, guys.
There is a lot of craziness going on.
.
I don't even have my eyes in my creature.
- You're a real son of a... - Sleep!
[Laughter]
It is day three. It is the last day.
I don't even have my eyes or my eye plate
or my palate for my mouth in my creature.
And I see Ben over there with his paint,
like, "Mm, should I put this paint here?
Beautiful."
Robert's gluing on hair and, like, putting on hair spray,
like, "Psst, psst, ah."
And Ivonne is still, like, working out
the fabrication and the understructure of her creature.
Like, I thought I was bad,
but, like, Ivonne's got...
you know, like, crap goin' on for herself too.
My skull was too small.
I had to retrofit my whole creature,
making it into a completely different creature
than what it used to be,
and readjust it so that the animatronics fit in there.
My goal is to get this creature finished,
but it just won't be the creature
that I had imagined in the beginning.
The judges are never gonna see the original creature.
Totally not where I want to be on this last day.
In the final hour,
there is a lot of craziness going on.
Ooh!
I think it'll stay on there.
- Oh, yeah? - [Sighs]
[Bleep].
I'm workin' until the last [Bleep] minute.
- Yeah, I know. - I look around the room,
and I see people with a lot of work to do.
And it's not my job to take on their stress.
I just... you know, it's like, "Hey."
Like, "Hopefully, it gets done."
Wow. How did you get yours done so quick?
.
This is probably one of the craziest nights
I've experienced.
I know this isn't gonna get finished.
Is there something I can help with?
.
Okay, guys. I'm afraid your time is up.
So go home, get some sleep,
and we'll have a lot of fun tomorrow.
I don't even want to present it.
I don't want to present mine either.
Game over, man.
- Ready? [Laughs] - No.
Nope, me either.
There's nothing more we can do at this point
except to communicate with our puppeteers
and get the best damn performance
that we can out of what we got.
This one is mine right here.
There is two puppeteers.
One is gonna be a remote control,
and the other one is gonna be inside.
Any way I can get a flashlight?
There's one more thing that we'll have to throw.
It's a switch you have to toggle.
There's some constellations on his chest plate.
They're gonna be hanging on a wall this time
and being puppeted from behind the wall,
as opposed to shoving a human inside the suit.
We got picture.
The rehearsal is going really well.
Both of my puppeteers really understand
where I want to go with the character
and how to puppeteer it.
The second she puts her hand in there,
I mean, it really comes to life, and I'm really happy.
Yeah, like, right there and then just kind of close it
and just keep real still.
I'm very excited about this challenge.
I'm rehearsing with my puppeteer,
and it's going really well.
I love the voice, but we have to make sure we...
they understand what I'm saying
because they want to hear the stories.
It looked better than I could've thought.
Fantastic.
.
Oh, no.
.
You can see it's trying.
It looks like it's just stuck.
And hopefully, that's the case with the eyelid as well.
Shoot. I was a little worried
'cause I didn't get a chance to test it.
Hey, Jake, it looks like the brows may have stopped.
Oh, that's interesting.
Do the eyes still move left and right?
The eyes still move left and right.
The servos go down, and there's nothing
I can do at this point.
I would have to get inside the head,
and I just don't have time to get in there
and risk breaking other parts of the piece to get to them.
This is a huge problem to me,
and they're gonna take away a ton
of the expression of my character,
but I've just got to roll with what I have.
For me, this is the most amazing set-reveal day.
We have all our creatures together
at the very same time.
Like, you just see the whole picture.
It's amazing.
Creature designers,
welcome to the Wizard's Mansion.
I think it's time to say hello to our judges.
Shall we?
First, a creature designer and director
who is no stranger to comedy.
He designed the creatures from Dinosaurs
and has directed almost every Muppet,
from Miss Piggy to Pepe the Prawn.
- Kirk Thatcher. - [Applause]
He is a king prawn, okay?
[Laughter]
Next, a creature fabricator
whose work has appeared in Austin Powers,
Spy Kids, and Edward Scissorhands...
- Beth Hathaway. - [Applause]
And, of course, chairman of The Henson Company
and our head judge, Brian Henson.
- [Applause] - [Whistles]
Remember, the judges are looking at how well
you convey realism, not only through the look
of your creature, but also through its story.
This week the screen tests are in the capable hands
of our professional puppeteers.
And we have a surprise guest playing our wizard.
- Cool. - Ooh.
So you guys can take a seat and enjoy the show.
I desire stimulating conversation.
But where does one find such stuff?
I know a place,
a place where everyone knows your name.
And they're always glad you dusted!
[Laughter]
What? It's Donald Faison!
Like, what? Like, oh, my gosh.
Like, he's gonna be interacting with my creature.
Like, how freakin' cool is that?
[Coughing]
Our creature brief this week is to create
a creature that's been beheaded
and mounted on a wall in a wizard's castle.
This is a comedic challenge, and Donald Faison
is a perfect actor to choose for it.
- What is your name? - My name is Sherman Oakmeyer.
I've been here for 1,000 years.
I seen all the wizards and mages
and sorceresses and "sorceri" come and go.
And then that stupid groundskeeper
chopped my head off.
What's that? Is that a termite?
[Sniffing]
You get off me, termite!
I don't see a termite, but what I do see
is my staff of knowledge.
which I used your body to make.
Oh, you're a real son of a...
- Sleep! - [Laughter]
I love my creature.
Sherman is exactly what I wanted him to be.
- Awake! - [Groaning]
What the... Oh, man.
What is your name again?
- Well, my name is Aah! - Aah!
- [Laughter] - Yeah.
He moves great.
My puppeteer is doing an amazing job
making my creature come to life.
One dark and stormy night,
I spied a large cage.
It was an aviary.
After I'd had my fill, I fell asleep.
And then when I woke up,
for some reason, I couldn't feel anything.
- I miss my body. - [Laughter]
But I took the rest of your body,
and I made pajamas out of your fur.
Keeps me warm at night.
- This is so horrific. - [Laughter]
I don't want to be here.
- Oh, mommy, make it stop. - Don't worry!
You don't have to be! Sleep!
- [Grunts] - [Laughter]
Life.
And I never ate marmalade again.
- Hi. - [Laughter]
I am Fenrez, the frost troll.
I come from a magical land
of snowbanks and ice castles,
and I found the wizard here in this forest.
And one day I chopped down
the mightiest tree I could find,
which was his friend.
And he got mad and cut off my head.
And now I can't pee.
[Laughter]
I'm absolutely thrilled with how my screen test went.
My puppet performed really well
and had a big range of expressions,
and Donald seemed to play off of that.
[Coughing]
- Whoa. - Oh, man.
- Oh. - Oh.
This is terrible in here.
Yeah, and your breath is terrible too.
- Is that what that smell is? - Oh, my gosh.
You need a mint or something.
Hold on, let me... let me... let me hook you up
with a fresh-breath spell.
- Ding! - Ah.
Let me smell that.
- Oh. - [Exhaling deeply]
- One more time. - [Exhales deeply]
I'm sorry, man, I don't think my spell worked.
Do you have a rotten tooth in there?
I don't know. You look. I can't see it.
Okay, open... let me see.
- Ah. - No.
- Ah. No. - No?
- No.
Hah. Ah. Mm.
- [Laughter] - [Moaning]
That's awesome. You know...
Donald Faison is making out with my creature.
♪ Oh ♪
Life.
Aw, dude.
Is there a party tonight?
You got any oregano left from the last party?
I don't... listen, I don't do oregano anymore.
It messes with my brain.
I've lost a lot of memory
- because of the oregano. - Dude.
Yeah, let's do a picture real quick.
You ready? On three... Selfie!
[Laughter] Right on.
- Tell us your story. - Aw, dude.
Okay, like, I was throwing you another one of my epic parties,
being your party planner and all,
and suddenly, your cousin, like, tripped on your wand
and, like, totally blew my body away, dude.
Watching my creature come to life,
especially with Donald doing it, it was amazing.
[Shouts]
[Laughter]
What do you want from me, wizard?
I'd like to hear your story.
My name is Orson.
I live in a cave at the bottom of Loch Ness.
That is, until one day
when my brilliant cousin Nessille
got the idea to go up to the surface.
Oh, sorry, I'm sure you know her as "Nessie,"
the great Loch Ness monster.
Oh, everyone's such a big fan of Nessie.
[Laughter]
I'm sorry. You don't need to yell at me.
I need to yell at someone.
- Sleep! - [Laughter]
Unfortunately, my paint job really sucks
on the screen test,
but I'm hoping that the boisterous personality
gives me the proper push for the judges.
- Alive... - Ahh...
[Laughter]
- How are you? - I'm wonderful.
- How are you? - Well, feeling a little funny
after that teleportation snafu.
I was just sitting there.
He thought, "Well, what a wonderful idea.
Let's try teleportation, shall we?"
And so he put me in a box,
and I popped my head out to say,
"And where in fact am I go..."
and poof! My body was gone,
and my head remains on this wall.
[Inhales deeply]
- [Sighs] - [Laughs]
My performer's doing an amazing job.
I love her ad-libbing, and I don't think
I could be happier by the way it went.
Thank you, designers,
for that extremely entertaining screen test.
And a huge thank-you to our very own wizard,
from Srubs, Kick-Ass 2, and The Exes,
Donald Faison.
- Yeah. - Yeah!
[Laughter and applause]
One thing you guys may not know...
when he was 17,
you were a regular for two seasons on Sesame Street...
- I was. - Which is pretty cool too.
It's all in the family. It's all in the family.
- Keep it in the family. - Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for doing this.
Thank you for having me. Thank you, guys.
- Thanks, Don. - Good job, guys.
[Cheering and whistling]
It's time for the critiques.
Ben, we'll start with you.
I loved Sherman Oaksmeyer.
Without hearing a word, I could tell it was a tree
or had been a tree,
and that's what's interesting about the design
is that it lends itself to asymmetry,
and that doesn't look bad. [Laughs]
- It was a gamble. - I really like the texture.
Did you sculpt the whole thing?
This is sculpted here,
and then this is all foam-fabricated. This is foam.
It's good, 'cause the textures match,
even though one's sculpted and one isn't.
- Nice job. - [Chuckles] Thanks.
Although it's a cool idea,
as soon as that right eye started blinking and stuff,
for me, it blew any illusion
that that could have ever been wood.
Brian gives fantastic notes.
One of the eyes of my character
is opening out of a cut-off part of the tree
that you wouldn't really expect to move,
and it does look pretty unnatural.
Thank you, Brian. And thank you, Ben.
Let's move on to Ivonne.
What was your inspiration for this character?
I had the badger, so my skull was a lot smaller.
Okay.
When I started to build the mechs,
I had to destroy my skull completely
and reformat the whole thing.
Yeah, like, this is not the creature
originally for my sculpt.
The only thing, honestly, that bothers me
is, now, I can't see his eyes that much,
but that his ears look like bare foam to me.
They are bare foam.
I didn't get to finish the creature.
I'm feeling like, it's just... it's sinking me down.
I'm, like, "Oh, my God."
I think you really hurt yourself with the eyes.
Eyes are so important,
especially in a comedic character.
Like, on Dinosaurs, we made sure
they had big eyes that read.
- Yeah. - Well, clearly,
you had issues with your schedule,
but it's a lovely concept and a fun creature.
- Thank you. - Thank you, Ivonne.
Let's move on to you, Jake.
What was the core that you built it over?
I had a bear to start out with.
So I wanted to take it pretty far away from the bear
and bring in some human elements.
Big mouth, great movement for the puppeteer.
- Good job. - Thank you.
He made me laugh.
I do enjoy his backstory.
Where'd you get the idea for that?
I'm a huge fan of any sort,
with trolls and anything like that.
I like him. He's got a lot of character.
- Thank you. - I think it's a real shame
that we weren't able to see the mechanisms work clearly.
There was a weakness that was happening
- up there in the eye area. - Yeah, of course.
One thing we'll run into a lot is horns.
And the biggest no-no with horns is if they are not rigid.
And when he was moving around,
I was very aware of his bouncing horns.
Right. Understandable.
It kind of really doesn't work.
Russ, moving on to you.
First off, I have to say
I have a warm place in my heart for minotaurs,
'cause I've done three Chronicles of Narnia films.
I think I would've liked it
if you could've mechanized the eyes.
What's the scribing on his horns?
It actually says "slave of Poseidon,"
'cause he was Poseidon's slave, so...
- Decent job. - Thank you.
Beth has a soft spot for minotaurs,
and I had no idea.
And I think I've got this one in the bag.
Explain the glowing lights on his collar.
Cause he's from ancient Greece
and because of the type of creature he is,
and he's in the sky,
I wanted him to wear, as a badge, those constellations.
I thought it made him
look like a Disneyland parade character.
Son of a bitch.
It's not quite as fantastic as I wish it would be,
because if you cut the head off of a minotaur,
you basically have a bull's head...
- Yes, sir. - But it's impressive.
- Thank you, sir. - Moving on to Robert.
I actually really like his sculpture.
- Oh, thank you. - I love all the detail in here.
I like this going on.
There's some nice textures down here in the side.
It's got a lot of character.
- Thank you. - He looked a little pop-eyed.
I mean, even in the design phase,
when you're doing a stoner or someone who's drunk
or someone who's just, you know, half-witted or dim-witted,
you want that half-lid almost to be your neutral pose.
And then he could get surprised and then go back to that.
I was slightly taken off-guard
when it was the stoner personality.
So I'm not quite sure that the personality
matched the story as well as I wish it would.
I agree with the judges. It could've been a lot better.
I should've really spent a little bit more time
on the mouth and the eyes.
Melissa, we're gonna move on to you.
The first thing I kind of noticed about it
was the paint job was pretty... yeah.
You're laughing. It was kind of monotone.
The paint job that you see before you
and the mounting was all done in exactly 45 minutes.
- Oh, wow. - Yes.
I have to say he doesn't really look aquatic to me,
and something about his long nose and everything
that almost looks like a wolf to me.
- Oh, okay. - I find myself wishing
that there was more slick textures,
that there was more glossiness going on.
Boy.
How I regret being so excited about working alone.
I work so much better in a team.
Like... [Sighs]
Now we're moving on to Lex.
Is this fur that you laid on back here?
Yeah, this is all fur,
and then this is just the painted foam.
I really like the detail
for thing that's just clipped foam.
- Very cute. - Oh, thank you.
My first thing I noticed was you gave it muppet eyes.
And by that, I mean really just little black felt dots.
I mean, I don't know. There might be detail.
They read pretty much like a flat black.
You can take the most realistic creature sculpt,
it can look absolutely real, and you put those eyes on it,
and suddenly, it goes, "Oh, it's a puppet."
And I... ugh.
- Yep. - What are the eyelids?
They are just the plastic.
I also was a bit short of time at the end.
To me I was drawn out of it
by the eyelids that felt like a toy.
It's really frustrating.
I didn't finish my creature
because I worked so long on the eye mechs,
trying to get it all working, but you know what?
I really want to keep going in this competition.
Thank you, Brian. And thank you, Lex.
Thank you.
The judges have a lot to discuss,
so you guys can wait it out
in The Henson screening room, and we'll call you back shortly.
Okay, so let's start with Ben's sherman.
- Oh, you're a real son of a... - Sleep!
Well, I was very impressed straightaway.
I thought the sculpt was really high caliber.
- I agree. - It didn't look like
anything I'd seen before.
The teeth are great. His mouth closes really nicely.
- He had great movement. - It came alive.
When it was talking, I was watching a character.
I think his asymmetric eyes was a really great choice.
And that lends itself to comedy, too,
- 'cause it's funny-looking. - He is funny-looking.
So Ivonne.
- My name is Aah! - Aah!
Uh, I think that was what she felt
- when she finished it. - I know.
Poor thing didn't finish it.
I think that's why she called him "Aah,"
'cause that's how she felt.
It was frustrating for her, you could tell.
Ivonne had an idea of what she was gonna do
and was able to accomplish almost none of it.
Everything that she was attempting to do,
I liked, but she didn't finish it.
Well, I didn't care for her backstory so much either.
There was no back... he liked to eat birds.
That was weak. It was a weak backstory.
Jake's Fenrez, the forest troll.
And I never ate marmalade again.
Hi.
I was real impressed with this creature.
I thought he really came to life well.
It's something that I would believe
you'd see on the shop wall of a creature shop.
A lot of great elements there.
- If the eyes worked... - That's the shame
is that the eyes really did let him down,
and the bouncing horns, I have to say.
The troll story...
It was performed, like, kind of a slow-witted creature,
and he has that kind of slack-jawed...
you know, like Bill Murray in Caddyshack, you know?
I just think it worked.
- Okay, Russ. - Cecil.
Your breath is terrible too.
- Is that what that smell is? - Oh, my gosh.
There's a real strength there in the hair punching.
- The horns are nice. - The horns are great.
Well, I was generally disappointed
that he basically did a bull head
in a... in a fantasy challenge.
But overall, it's still an impressive minotaur.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Robert. - Robert with Jasper.
Aw, dude. Aw, is there a party tonight?
That really is movie-worthy if it could animate.
The eyes were his biggest downfall.
If he was half-lidded, I think it would've
bumped him up to, like, okay.
In terms of believability,
his sculpting, and finishing, and accessorizing
- is top-notch. - I agree.
You really can't do better than that.
- Melissa. - Melissa and Orson.
Well, everyone's such a big fan of Nessie.
Her humor... the story... really inventive, very funny.
I liked that it latched on to the Loch Ness mythology.
But it didn't carry through in her sculpting.
And the other thing that really kills me is the eyes.
They look like two billiard balls.
Your mind goes, "Oh, it's a solid object with paint on it."
I would've sent it back.
As a hand puppet,
it didn't work very well
'cause the mouth couldn't close.
She sacrificed quality for movement.
Moving on to Lex's Wizard Familiar.
Chupa-cada-bra.
Feeling a little funny
after that teleportation snafu.
- I like the story. - I love the story.
The story was very good.
Nice finishing work on the fur.
And fur is really hard to work with.
- It is. - The eyes, you know?
That's the... that's the hardest thing
is the flat, black, muppet-y eye.
For you, it was that muppet-y eye.
For me, it was those plastic lids clapping.
And I was just thinking, "In a toy store,
that's where you see that."
All right, so we've made our decision.
- [Sighs] Yeah. - Yeah.
Well, we should bring 'em back in.
Creature designers, time to find out
what the judges thought of your work.
Russ and Lex...
You are safe.
We'll see more of your work next week.
You can return to the screening room.
Thank you.
I'm so relieved that I got to be safe this week.
I was so sure that I was going home.
This... the week's been really rough.
I didn't get to finish my creature.
It's a really good result as far as I'm concerned.
I loved your design. I did.
I liked it, but I think I gave...
I went a little too close to earth.
I thought that was gonna bite me hard.
Out of the five of you,
one of you will win this week's challenge,
and one of you will be eliminated.
Three of the creatures
had particularly original, fantastic backstories
that were well-thought-out and very funny,
the sculpting was particularly impressive
on all three creatures,
and the finishing and the details
were really careful.
Those three creature designers
are Robert...
Jake...
And Ben.
But one creature designer's work stood out.
Three of the creatures
had particularly original, fantastic backstories.
But one creature designer's work stood out...
And that was Ben's.
Thank you so much.
Robert, Jake, and of course Ben,
you can return to the screening room.
Winning two weeks in a row
I think definitely shows the other competitors
that I'm somewhat of a threat to them.
Ivonne and Melissa,
the judges were least impressed with your creatures,
which means one of you will be eliminated tonight.
Brian?
Melissa, although we really liked
the backstory that you had for your creature,
we felt that your sculpting and your painting
was really not realistic enough for us.
Ivonne, we loved where you said
you were going with your creature.
But in the end, you put on camera
a creature that was completely unfinished.
I know.
This was really hard for us, guys,
and it was really close.
The creature designer eliminated tonight is...
Ivonne.
Thank you, Melissa. That means you're safe.
We'll see more of your work next week.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
You can do this.
I particularly loved where you were going with that.
I thought the colors and everything was really fun.
- It's just, you know... - Hey, if I get to finish it...
That's the nature of filming, and the cameras must roll.
- I understand. - They must roll
when they say they're gonna roll.
Thank you.
I really would have liked to have won, you know?
But, I respect the judges decision. And I understand.
It's just. I ran out of time.
And, I am the one to go home.
It is me.
I would have hated to have seen, anybody else go home.
I have no regrets.
I came in here to push myself and challenge myself.
And that's what I did.
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