Carlos Huante’s Clayface explorations ask a useful creature-design question: how far can a body change while still reading as a person?
Huante shared the work on October 24, 2026. In his accompanying explanation, he places it before the film’s greenlight and describes a short exploratory assignment. A separate post says the work was for a different director. These are authentic early concepts connected to the project, but they are not evidence of the final creature approved for James Watkins’s film. Read Huante’s original post ↗
Stretch the silhouette, keep the identity
In the concept above, the extended arm makes the transformation readable at a glance. Its unusual length changes the balance of the silhouette, while the face, torso and clenched hand remain recognisably human. That contrast is more informative than a uniformly distorted body: it gives us a familiar structure against which to judge the impossible change.
The brown surface also carries ridges and creases rather than the smooth finish of an idealised superhero body. In our reading, those marks help bridge anatomy and malleable material. They suggest that the form could be pushed or pulled, even though we are looking at a still image. The signature is retained in the reproduction.
Material and colour change the character
In the later post, Huante explicitly considers gray clay, Chavant brown and terracotta. The question is about the identity of the material, not just finding an attractive palette. The gray head study above shifts attention toward planes, dents and uneven surface transitions; compare it with the warmer full-body exploration.
These are different images, so the comparison cannot isolate colour alone. Pose, lighting and surface detail also change. For your own study, keep one drawing fixed and test several material palettes on separate layers. Then compare the values as well as the hue: changing the colour without controlling contrast can accidentally change what the audience notices first.
Keep the facial landmarks readable
This closer portrait shifts the design question from the silhouette to the face. The surface is uneven, but the eye sockets, nose and mouth remain easy to locate. The darker reddish areas draw attention to the head, while the paler neck and shoulder forms give it a broader supporting shape. A viewer can still read a human expression through the disruption.
Compare it with the gray profile study above. The viewpoints and lighting differ, so this is not a controlled colour test or a documented before-and-after sequence. What the pair does offer is a way to study how much recognisable structure survives a change in surface. For a painting exercise, preserve the brow, nose and mouth relationships while changing the surrounding planes. That is our suggestion for studying the artwork, rather than a description of Huante’s workflow.
Early exploration is not the final design
Watkins later told TechRadar that the film’s creature went through approximately seventeen versions, with attention to preserving Matt Hagen’s emotional identity. That is a separate account of the film’s design development. The available sources do not establish a one-to-one progression from these particular Huante images to the final screen creature. Read Watkins’s design interview — contains film spoilers ↗
The environment carries a design brief too
In DC’s Gotham interview, Watkins describes his work with production designer James Price: an oppressive city influenced by German Expressionist cinema, contrasted with Coast City’s lighter palette. It is useful context for the finished film’s environments, but it does not identify the background or intended setting of Huante’s studies. Read the production-design discussion ↗
Original visual analysis of publicly shared early concepts. We did not interview Huante or the film team. The full-body reproduction is sourced via Know-It-All Nation and linked to the artist’s original post; the gray study is the artist’s public social preview. No fan art or generated images are presented as production work.
