Head Creation - Part 3 - Eyes

Eyes. The original idea for these eyes came from Marina's Art Dolls Blog. I have changed it up some to better suit my needs. I started out with some 1" round pine balls I got from a craft store.

Using amy Dremel, I made hole on the top of the ball the size of an iris. This turned out to be a lot harder than I had imagined. The ball really wanted to fly out of my hand so I ended up with several mistakes. Anyways, I drilled a hole through the center of the iris to the back of the ball. I did this for two reasons. First, I needed to put the ball on a post in order to paint it. Second, I need there to be a hole in the center of the iris so I can move the eyes back and forth when animating. From there I painted the balls white and inserted the irises.

I did not paint the irises myself. Instead I used photoshop to create them and then printed them out. After putting the irises in, I covered the eyes in epoxy resin. This will make the eyes shiny and somewhat reflective as you can see in the above photo.

The last step is to drill a hole in the center of the iris that connects with the hole I had previously drilled.

Up Next... Head Assembly.