# Super cheap realistic eyes



## divinedragon7 (May 29, 2009)

While working on my entery for the 20$ prop challenge i ran into some problems with my props eyes, namely they needed to be big and the shape wouldn't work with a normal ball. I needed a cheap solution, so i dusted off an old idea. And thanks to a little accident figured out a few tricks.

I have never had luck with painting over an eye with clear nail polish to get the slightly reflective quality real eyes have, so i thought about putting a lense over the fake eye somehow.










You can use any type of plastic bottle, i picked a water bottle because i have a ton laying around, just as long as it has a smooth curved surface that will become the lense of the eye.










Cut it down until its a bit bigger then the eye socket you're working with. The way i use these eyes is to insert them from behind so the overlap of the plastic and prop is on the inside and will be used to secure the eye to the prop. Please don't be stupid like me and try to hot glue the plastic in, that just destroys the eye.

Because the plastic is thin it can easily bend to fit the contours of the eye hole you're working with. Next print out the eye design you want to use. You can see i wasn't careful when i cut mine out or glued it in but thats alright. Don't worry about getting extra glue on the plastic.










Here you can see the curve the plastic gives the eye and the reflectiveness of it.










My original idea was the paint on a few coats on glue so that i could put a light behind the eyes and give them a glow, after the first coat i realized the colored was off and decided just to paint them white. It turned out this was a good idea. Paint a single coat of elmers glue onto the back of the eye, this will help hold the printout in place and will later help the paint stick to it better, as well as properly crack.


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## divinedragon7 (May 29, 2009)

Once the glue is dry lightly brush on a thin coat of white paint, make sure to start over the printout and move towards the edge. As the white paint dries on the glue it will crack a bit along the brush lines.










Once the white paint is dry and has cracked add a layer of red. It won't show through white but will seep into the cracks and look like veins. I didn't put enough white paint on this attempt to show how the brush strokes could also appear as a bit of the eye muscles.










And here is how they look when you do use enough of the white paint, this is taken from the eyes of my entery.










There you go, a plastic water bottle, a print out, a little glue and paint and a very realistic eyeball for just a few cents.


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## Lord Homicide (May 11, 2012)

Hey, can't see the pics. Looks like your file names are *.jpg.html
*
Delete the *.html* portion

**Actually it appears your photobucket account doesn't exist.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

The photobucket account does exist, but there's a problem with the code used to insert the pictures. DD, take a look at this thread for guidance on how to fix Photobucket embedding issues:

http://www.hauntforum.com/showthread.php?t=36928

In the meantime, here are the first few photos:


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## nimblemonkey (Aug 21, 2011)

Thanks for those first few images Roxy- I was understanding the copy without the pics but as they say "a picture is worth a thousand words..." and illustrates the process a whole lot easier for me.


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## divinedragon7 (May 29, 2009)

Alright think i have the images fixed, thank you everyone for the help


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