I watched Monsters Inc. with my child recently and I rediscovered a gag I liked a lot: Sulley’s surfaces changed color when he squished against the glass in the trash masher scene (bonus points to the one who can identify the origin of Pixar’s homage in this scene. Be specific. In the commentary, Lassiter says something to the effect of, “And this was based on a cartoon we like”. Name the ‘toon he was referring to). You see it in the real world when someone presses their hand or face against a sheet of glass. The skin that touches the glass takes on a much lighter, almost waxy hue.

Here's the trick:

Use a gradient with normal blending mode in the color channel and select Incident Angle as the input parameter. Envelope the layer opacity based on the time during which the “skin” touches the glass. Also, you need to use motion designer to get the soft-body dynamic thing happening.

These MD settings are just "Neat, it works" settings. Obviously you'll need to tweak the hell out of the settings to suit your own purposes.

In Layout:
Give each object a subdivision order of "last".
Make the "skin" object the target.
Turn collision on for the glass.
Make the skin thickness for both objects .005 assuming you use measurements near the 1m defaults on the object's sizes.
Use the default settings for rubber on the glass and give it an ungawdly spring (50K, f'rinstance)
Use the default settings for jelly on the skin and leave the rest of the settings alone.
Move the skin object so it will collide with the glass object.
Start the simulation.

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