Eyeball trick

[frankinstien]

Eyeball positioning is critical when photographing dolls and TPE dolls usually just come with cotton backing to the plastic eyes which makes them hard to position.

So, I tried this trick:

Get two 15/16 inch ball bearings. They're about $7 or $8 each on eBay.



Remove the eye from the dolls head and take the cotton out of the eyesocket completely, leave no cotton.
Now take the cotton ball from the eye socket and flatten it out, if you need to remove material do so.



Place the flatten out cotton back into the back of the eye socket of the doll so its as far back as possible.



Place the ball bearing into the back of the eyeball



place the eye with the ball bearing into the eye socket of the doll.

Now simply press the eye in as far as you can with your index finger and adjust it's positioning.

You'll find that this approach makes it very easy to position eyes as oppose to having to fight the eyes' resistance with just the cotton backing.

[Mr Franz]

That's really cool!

I did something similar for a Valentina Girl head I made recently. I used perfume bottle tops, but I think your idea would work better for my TPE lass' eye sockets.

[Wheezer]

Interesting.
Thanks for the tip and good write up.
Cheers!
... W ...

[mclarin]

That looks like it works really well.

You could also use Delrin balls which are lighter and cheaper but I only see 7/8" and 1" on ebay. I did find 24mm delrin balls on ebay which is slightly bigger than 15/16

[Wheezer]

Woo woo ... it works.
I got some of them and tested in a few heads.
It's simple and it works well.

Now I have a bunch of female doll heads with big clanking balls.
(Oddly, that does not seem to sound right)

Cheers!
... W ...

[RevJack]

That looks like it works really well.

You could also use Delrin balls which are lighter and cheaper but I only see 7/8" and 1" on ebay. I did find 24mm delrin balls on ebay which is slightly bigger than 15/16

But do they work?

[Wheezer]

That looks like it works really well.

You could also use Delrin balls which are lighter and cheaper but I only see 7/8" and 1" on ebay. I did find 24mm delrin balls on ebay which is slightly bigger than 15/16

But do they work?

From what I have seen eyeball rotation solutions tend to need a FIRM material for the pivot point.
Good examples are these balls, beads, MF eyes and The Doll Lab solutions.
One company used softer silicone balls for eye pivots, they were good but not an easy turn.

So I guess as long as the Delrin balls are firm to hard and the correct size, they should work.
Probably best to powder inside the eye socket and inside the eye ball to ease rotation.

Cheers!
... W ...

[Photo_guy]

Love this idea, thanks for sharing.

I just had Ambers eyes out for the first time- kinda creepy!
Being able to change their position easily would be pretty awesome.