Photo Credit: Scott Miller/Syfy

The hit reality-competition series set in the magical world of top-notch special effects and make-up artistry returns for a second season featuring 14 aspiring special effects make-up artists competing for their shot at make-up-effects stardom and the chance to breakout in the competitive field. This season, contestants will re-imagine iconic characters from the book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” create a waterproof sea creature, bring to life terrifying phobias and craft an elaborate body painting challenge that must incorporate two live models.

Judging the series is multiple Academy Award-winner Ve Neill, famed special make-up effects artist Glenn Hetrick and director and creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos. McKenzie Westmore hosts the series. The season also contains a number of guest appearances including Vivica Fox, musical artist Asher Roth and noted horror makeup artist Tom Savini.

This season, the ante has been upped so incredibly…the foundation challenges, the spotlight challenges, everything! Season two has seven women and seven men contestants, which is an equal battle of the sexes as opposed to last year when women were the minority. In fact, the first challenge of the season is a battle of the sexes. Not only that, but it seems to be a pretty level playing field as far as talent and experience is concerned.

As for the challenges… the contestants start off with a challenge of reinventing the three main characters (Tin Woodsman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow) of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” original book. Ve Neill said, “The important thing to mention about that was we really didn’t want them to do anything that was in the movie.”

Westmore went on to say, “Then we went into aquatic creatures. I took them down to the Long Beach Aquarium and they got to travel through the aquarium and take a look at all of the different animals and create a human aquatic creature…waterproofed. And they then had to figure out how to make their entire makeups, head to toe, waterproof so that their models could be submerged in a tank for five minutes.”

Another challenge takes place at Linda Vista Community Hospital in downtown Los Angeles, which is a very haunted landmark of hospitals in America. Oh yeah, they were woken up at 1am in the morning to have the challenge delivered to them at 2am. Westmore says, “They had the challenge of taking a phobia and incorporating it into their own thought of a horror one. So they were then individually put into rooms for 30 minutes to inspire them to create…”

And the infamous nude-body-painting challenge is back only the models were doubled. So each contestant or teams of two had to do two models. They had to choose a background and then one had to blend and one had to be a character.

There will also be plenty of guest judges, some from the Syfy family. And McKenzie Westmore gets her first cast done for the new promo campaign! Basically, there’s a ton to look forward to this season. Season 2 cannot come soon enough!

Also, fun fact: Ve Neill just wrapped The Hunger Games in North Carolina with NC resident, Conor McCullagh, the Face Off Season 1 winner after running into McCullagh at Monsterpalluza and also invited contestants, Tate and Anthony to work for her in New York on The Amazing Spiderman. For more on The Hunger Games, catch my brief interview with Neill after the panel and a snippet of the panel below:

Here I am with Ve Neill:

Face Off season 2 premieres Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 10/9c.