28th ENTRY - Eyes

4mm balls are not easy to create.

Earlier on I attempted ideas of sculpting a positive full eyeball including the bulge of the cornea, to then mould and perhaps cast in two parts, inner eye separate from cornea. But of course at this scale it is probably impossible, and even my attempts at casting a perfect ball in the blue hard wax failed to begin with.

All along, my main concern regarding the eyes has been to achieve a realistic cornea, bulging out slightly from the rest of the eyeball, and being a transparent lens over the iris. My frustrations about sculpting eyelids over flattened beads were recorded in entries 10 and 15.

The tutorials available online, ranging from the Stan Winston School, to an odd Southern American gentleman's own technique, have all been very illuminating, but also not much help to someone working at 1:6 scale.

Doll makers and hobbyists brought me closer to the solution, suggesting liquid Fimo, or UV resins, which I'd had no experience with.
But most helpful was the example of the brilliant artist from Japan, Hanano, who makes the most arrestingly beautiful ball jointed dolls, and whose work I find myself deeply admiring.

As his eyes are only one or two millimetres larger than mine, and yet perfectly crafted, his work was the closest thing to the answers I was looking for.

Hence, between moments of much research and despair, the evolution of eyes for this project has been as follows:

During my mould-making expedition in Scotland,

Tobias started thinking about a solution,

using the beads, sanding down a 2mm flat surface,

spray painting them white,

and painting the iris with Humbrol enamels.

A solution to the cornea had not yet been found.

First tests by Tobias Feltus, 26/02/2012

Later on I attempted using a mask for the 2mm

iris diameter cut-off point, and made a silicone box

mould of a bead. Unfortunately I had the 

unpleasant surprise of the mask not actually being

a 2mm circle, as these things are designed

to take into account the width of your pencil

drawing the circle!

Anyhow, I couldn't get the wax to cast

properly, and didn't try resin, who knows why.

After much research I managed to find
a supplier in the UK of German glass
doll eyes, so I ordered a few to sample.
They are very nice, pretty much the right
scale, but not round on the back where
they are attached to wire. The idea of the
balls not being perfectly round on the
back worried me that they might not
work well in the eye sockets.

Here I tried making a quick cornea on two beads
with soft wax, and painted them.
I suppose I was thinking about the possibility
of there being no other way than to have a solid ball,
cornea and all, and just a gloss varnish overtop.
The third test was a sanded down iris, painted with
Humbrol paints, and varnished with a thick coat of
Humbrol gloss coat.
I also tested the Humbrol gloss coat thick, casting
it into the nose of a silicone mould.

Final Approach

Final approach. Silicone mould.

Two layers of beads, the lower level to

sink the negative space of the mould

down in order to achieve a more complete

sphere. This made casting very difficult,

but I felt it was important to have as round

a back of a ball as possible.

EasyFlow 120 cast. This was very

difficult, as the resin has a high enough

viscosity that it doesn't easily flow into

small holes. I had to go through various

attempts and techniques, using brushes,

compressed air, and eventually just

widening the hole with tweezers and

dropping the resin in. Many failures

in each batch.

Finished test.
EasyFlow 120 cast.
2mm iris drilled in.
Smaller hole shallowly drilled for pupil.
Iris and pupil painted with acrylic inks.
Cornea built with Clear IBD Builder Gel,
cured under a UV lamp for 3 minutes.

After testing to see if the UV Gel withstood
being drilled into, for animation purposes,
I decided it was a pity to put a hole through
the lens, and decided to try making tiny holes
around the iris, in the white of the eye.
I made four holes - top, bottom, left, right.

Test with hole in cornea, and with the tiny holes

surrounding the iris as a substitute to the first hole.

Painting the irises with acrylic inks.

40 finished eyes.

Materials used:

Gütermann Renaissance beads, 4mm - The only 4mm beads I was able to find before beginning sculpting the figures.

Chavant Plastilene, Lego, and PlatSil Gel 10 for the mould.

EasyFlow 120 for the casts (not ideal. EasyFlow 60 would be better for this job.

Dremel.

Wire Gauge HSS Twist Drill bits

Small brush.

Liquitex or Daler Rowney acrylic inks and Liquitex Gloss Medium & Varnish.

ibd Builder Gel - Cear (UV Gel for Natural Nail Overlays and Pedicures, 14g)
This introduction was useful

UV Multi System Curing Lamp (I got a Star Nails by United Beauty one on ebay).

Alcohol.

Update Entry from December 19th, 2012

I believe many months ago (years), when I started looking for beads for eyes, and at 4mm was able only to find the barely sufficient plastic pearls I ended up using, I must have considered the idea of body piercing surgical steel balls.  However, this thought was probably dismissed, as the steel would not work for final eyeballs (painted and all).

Now that I have managed the eyeball creation, as above, the best thing for the sculpting process would have been surgical steel balls, and indeed they do exist at 4mm, and are perfect, and even threaded!

I ordered some after having an epiphany, after more discouragement in not finding 4mm metal beads. I will use them during my eye socket creation with the Castilene casts.