Alright, let’s talk about this little project I did, the ‘joker and clayface’ thing. It wasn’t anything major, just something I wanted to try out.
So, the idea popped into my head, you know? Joker and Clayface. Always thought they were an interesting pair visually. One sharp and defined, the other… well, mud. Figured it’d be a good challenge to try and get them looking decent together, maybe in a 3D scene.
Getting Started
First thing, I just grabbed a bunch of reference images. Comics, cartoons, games, anything I could find online. Just soaked it all in, trying to get a feel for the shapes and colors I wanted. Didn’t want to copy any single version, more like mix and match bits I liked.
I decided to use Blender for this. It’s free, and I’m comfortable enough with it. No fancy stuff, just the basics.
Making the Joker
Started with Joker. Seemed easier. Basic human shape, right? Well, sort of. I blocked out the basic form first. Then spent ages trying to get that skinny, sharp look right. Especially the face. Getting that manic grin without it looking totally stupid took a lot of fiddling. Pushing vertices, pulling edges, smoothing, then sharpening again. It was back and forth for a while.
Texturing was okay. Found some simple fabric textures for the suit, tweaked the colors to get that purple and green. The face paint was just painted straight onto the model. Kept it simple, almost cartoonish.
Tackling Clayface
Clayface was… different. He’s basically a pile of shifting mud. How do you even model that? I started with a rough blob shape. Then I used the sculpt tools quite a bit. Tried to make it look like thick, wet clay. Lots of lumps, bumps, and drips. It was hard to make it look heavy and flowing at the same time.
The texture was the real headache. How do you texture mud convincingly? I layered a bunch of noise textures, played with the roughness and specular settings. Tried making some parts look wetter than others. Honestly, not sure I nailed it. It looked kinda like melted chocolate sometimes. It was messy work, literally pushing digital mud around.
Putting Them Together
Once I had both models kinda done, I wanted to put them in a simple scene. Nothing fancy, just a basic floor and a wall, like a dark alley or something. Added a couple of simple lights. One main light, one rim light to make them pop a bit from the background.
Positioned them facing off. Joker doing his usual taunting pose, Clayface just looming there like a big mud pile. Rendered out a few images.
Final Thoughts
So, how did it turn out? Eh, it’s okay. Learned a bit, especially about sculpting messy shapes like Clayface. Joker looks decent enough from certain angles. The whole thing took longer than I thought, mostly tweaking Clayface’s shape and texture.
It’s not perfect, far from it. Some parts look rushed. But it was a good exercise. Sometimes you just gotta build stuff, you know? Doesn’t always have to be groundbreaking. Just getting hands-on, making something appear on the screen. That’s the fun part. Might revisit it later, maybe try animating Clayface’s shifting form. That sounds like a nightmare, actually. We’ll see.
