Episode Recap: Hive Mind

After last week’s loss, Twisted Six Effects is now Twisted Five, but they’re not gonna let that slow them down! In this week’s Alien Insect challenge, they choose the wasp as their inspiration for three characters: a queen, a drone, and a worker.

The shop elects Jill as their forewoman this week, and she delegates like the boss she is. They decide to put the queen makeup on a male model so she/he will stand tall and regal above the rest of the group. Mr. Westmore has a tough time with this concept and suggests they soften the features considerably and add a neck appliance to hide the model’s Adam’s apple. Jill is slightly rattled by all this feedback, but she takes it in and they make the changes. KC all but starts over on her sculpt after Mr. Westmore’s feedback, but she’s feeling really positive about getting so much good advice and doing the work super quick.

Ethereal Effects, who elect Nelson and choose termites as their inspiration, are feeling good after a solid win last week. Nelson starts sculpting the queen’s face, but when he struggles to balance the femininity with the size of the model, Andrew steps in to help him out. Suzanne has a ton of experience fabricating, so she heads up the required prop: a baby alien hatching out of an egg. The baby’s mandibles extend pretty far forward so as she’s molding, she decides to sculpt a two-part mold to avoid breaking them.

Nelson, then Andrew, then Kierstin file into the mold room one after the other to suggest that maybe Suzanne’s not doing it right, and maybe there’s a faster way, and is she really sure… but Suzanne holds firm to her technique, and darned if that creepy baby doesn’t turn out beautifully. On the flip side, Joseph and Andrew forget to release the positive in their cowl mold and wind up losing a bunch of time scraping foam off of the fiberglass positive. They need to mold the same cowl twice, so this is a rough blow for them!

When the insects hit the stage, the judges once again award the win to Ethereal Effects. Although Suzanne and Nelson (who also had the idea to put their queen in drag) didn’t push the femininity far enough to overcome the model’s natural masculinity, the color scheme of the hive was so cohesive, and the other sculpts so beautiful, that Team Termite are the clear winners. Because Faina was key in tying the paint job together, and her face sculpt was inspired, she is this week’s winner!

And of course this means that Twisted Six is on bottom looks. As the foreperson, Jill had the weight of the shop on her shoulders but still managed, with Nick, to turn out one of the judges’ favorite characters: the queen. The ornate cowl, with hive-like structures, and the harmonious paint job bring the regal dominance to the fore. But since one of their least favorite works, Al and Phil’s drone, was part of this colony, she faces elimination along with them.

Their central critique for Jill is that she didn’t provide the leadership in unifying the colony in form language and color palate, but ultimately they find Al’s contribution minimal and eliminate him. Although he did a great job with the egg and baby, his overall contributions to the makeup were not enough to keep him in the game. The artists’ colony says goodbye to their papa figure.