Clayface Concept Art Shows Disturbing Alternate Designs For DC Universe Villain

Spoilers for "Clayface" to follow.

The DC Universe has delivered its first properly scary film. Though a bit shapeless, "Clayface" is an effective and very gory body horror movie. Drawing from a script by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini (and borrowing a whole lot from Sam Raimi's "Darkman" along the way), director James Watkins re-imagines the titular Batman villain as a tragic but still very horrific movie monster here.

Indeed, Tom Rhys Harries's Matt Hagen goes through quite a transformation in the film, and it's heavily reliant on implication (much like the special effects in James Cameron's "The Terminator"). A creepy eye here, a spiky hand there — it's really comic book-y until the final act finally reveals the mud-like Clayface fans know from DC's comics. Now, concept artist Carlos Huante has now taken to Instagram to share some of his early design work on "Clayface" before the film was properly greenlit by Warner Bros. Pictures.

"I did some work on it before it was green lit," Huante wrote. "It wasn't clear what they were going to do with it at first but, it was an origin story and after this image it was clearer it was going to be a horror movie rather the Batman supervillain.. which is cool by me.. but i still wanted to go for it with full Clayface creature.. but i was only hired for a week and even that seemed to be a stretch for their budget.. weird times.."

Again, for most of "Clayface," the Matt Hagen characters look fairly ordinary. Sure, his face melts a bit here and there, but he doesn't look like a true comic book creation until he turns into a gigantic mud-monster at the end of the film. However, in the early version of the movie that Carlos Huante worked on, it appears Matt was going to look twisted from the start. With his asymmetric skull and one of his arms fused to his torso, he comes across as a man who's simply unable to hold a consistent physical form in this artwork.

Notable, "Clayface" originated with Mike Flanagan, who pitched the project to DC Studios in the first place. That said, the final version of the film belongs to James Watkins, which is why the director has said that DC Comics fans should blame him if they don't like it. Still, we can't help but wonder about the iteration of the movie where the Clayface character's body morphs in unnerving ways (as opposed to him merely copying others).

"Clayface" is currently playing in theaters.