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Cross eyed dolls?

Feb 26, 2010

    1. :lol:

      Totally agree, funky eyes throw off the whole look even if everything else is perfectly arranged. Just like with real people, the eyes are always the center of focus on a face, so when there's something a little wrong it makes a big difference.

      I think it's just something you have to get the hang of through practice. When I first got my doll, I had so much trouble getting his eyes just right. Now it's a little easier.
       
    2. Well, as someone who's had a mildly turned-in eye since childhood, I tend to be more forgiving than most of slight aberrations. (And rather cool to the idea of 3-D movies, since you can't enjoy them without good binocular vision.)

      A really strong slippage in position is obvious, and I do agree you need to check the positioning if your doll is trying to stare out its ear or down its own neck, but sometimes putty does shift things a bit over time and it goes unnoticed until the pictures are taken. (And that pink Volks stuff used to puff up as it dried and suddenly you realized your doll's eyes are retreating inward from the sockets!)

      I have one doll who is intentionally and symmetrically slightly cross-eyed. Her modded eye sockets are oddly shaped, and she needed a larger eye, so very large irises, and that's how they ended up needing to be positioned. And I like it like that.

      Sometimes the eyes AREN'T positioned wrong, but the sides of the eye sockets extend backward at the sides, and you see a lot more of the "whites" on the sides than in the inner corners. Some types of eyes seem to worsen the problem too.

      And what kind of photos you take of your dolls also determines eye position. A lot of closeups where the doll is supposed to be looking at someone, and the eyes need to be set inward slightly or the doll looks like it's off meditating somewhere instead of focusing. If all you take are half-body or full shots, or always have the head turned slightly, you can get away with perfectly symmetrical, centered eyes. IF the eye sockets themselves will allow it. I've seen so many sculpts with two different size eye sockets, that getting eyes level and even is a lot of work.

      But really, IMO, it's no mystery why off-positioning in the marketplace more. Often people sell dolls they're not playing with much, and often take them out of the box after some time away and snap the sale pictures. True they should check before snapping, but *shrug*.
       
    3. Wonky eyes can ruin an otherwise beautiful picture. It also bugs me when the eyes are placed dead center in the eye, where you can see equal amounts of iris all around. It gives them a scared/crazy look.

      Some sculpts are just horrible for the cross eyes. My DOI A&D is horrible for this. Something about the narrow eyes and their placement on his head always make them look crossed. I haven't found a way to make him look straight with out being cross eyed. So he will most likely be eternally glancing slightly to one side.
       
    4. Crossed eyes on dolls bug me SO HARD. I'll fiddle with the eyes for an hour or more, using the flashlight trick mentioned above and/or my webcam, until they're PERFECT. One doll is especially bad about that, as her eyes have a tendency to fall backwards. I like to use blu-tack, because I can wiggle the eyes around with the putty already there.

      I understand why people have dolls with wonky eyes. I don't understand why they post pictures of them. Straight-ahead non-zombie is easy; bottom of the iris touching the lower lid, inner edge of the iris lined up with the corners of the mouth. That's how a human looks straight ahead, so it pings as "right."

      Some people bond with face-ups. I bond by sticking my fingers in their skulls and poking their eyes.
       
    5. Sometimes I intentionally make my doll slightly crossed eyes. That makes my doll looks cute.
      Very very few or rare case but I sometimes feel that wall-eyes looks sexy or mysterious.
       
    6. I was at a doll meet once with an extremely cross-eyed doll and I spent most of the meet going "No, DeadLegato, that's not your doll. You can't just walk over there and fix it. No, it's not your doll. Just ignore it." in my head.

      I photoshopped all my pics of that doll to have properly placed eyes when I got home before posting my meet shots. No one ever said anything about it, but I wonder if that was technically 'ethical' or not.

      I've had occasions myself though where I've taken a bunch of meet shots or 'heat of the moment' shots only to review the pictures and realize the doll was wonky-eyed.

      I'm in the process of replacing all but one of my doll's glass/acrylic eyes with urethane and soft glass eyes. You don't have to worry about wonky eye bevels with soft eyes! Sure, it costs a lot more, but I'm not the type to change my dolls eyes very often, so it's worth it.

      (I view their eye color as 'their eye color' and don't change it, even when they're cosplaying. I don't wear colored contacts and neither do my dolls, ha.)
       
    7. My L-bi has his eyes intentionally placed a liiittle inward/cross eyed, because I think it looks cute on him and suits the character. (It might be different if I had somewhere nice to take lots of photos/photostories, but I tend to keep my dolls' eyes in a particular position that best represents their character.)

      The thing that really annoys me is when one eye has slipped down significantly, especially if that means a lot of iris/white is showing at the top of the eye. >< But as for unfortunate eye placements in the Marketplace, if that puts other people off from molds I'm interested in, all the better! ;)
       
    8. I feel that misaligned eyes in doll photos, unless they are intended deliberately for the character, spell disrespect towards the viewers, just like unintentionally messy hair. My mild OCD causes a rather visceral reaction to such things. As far as poorly carved eye wells, that's why they sell those cute round eye beveler stones.
       
    9. My friend has a doll with a deliberate lazy eye, it's slight but there. It is a part of his character. For dolls where it isn't intentional... we say they are 'channeling their inner chameleon'. ^_~
       
    10. It definitely is difficult to position them perfectly, but I get really annoyed when I see that time was simply not put into doing the task. *~~~* This is, of course, excused if there is a reason for the eye placement.
       
    11. My doll's eye sockets are not the exact same shape so no matter where I put the eyes one always looks funky. It's not user error, it;s just his head is not even. I do try my hardest to keep them nice though.
       
    12. I have one doll in particular, gives me the worst problems. It's a CP type 2 head on a non-cp body, so you have the neck donut in the head, and then the locking mechanism on the head cap, so you have to postition the donut so the long part of the lock sticks into the gap of the donut, then when you close and twist the cap on, the donut also gets moved. Well with that going on the donut keeps knocking into the eyes. I do my best, but there isn't a way around it. I may try shaving off part of the locking on the head, or switch the headcap to use magnets, because it's so frustrating. Hard enough to get the headcap on with the donut, but then to keep the donut from knocking into the eyes...sigh...so yeah there can be things going on that is causing the problems you don't even know about.

      And I'm cross-eyed in real life, so I find there is nothing wrong with dolls looking that way. Sure the dolls eyes can be repositioned but who am I to judge.

      -Anneke
       
    13. This is funny because I just came onto the General Discussion board to ask this question:

      "Is there a trick to getting eyes perfectly aligned"??

      I have more trouble with it on some dolls than others. I always check my photos before I post them, and won't post an obviously crooked eye placement........although if I'm looking at someone else's photos and see it, I just figure that if I don't like it, I can stop looking!

      Any helpful hints on perfect placement would be appreciated!
       
    14. Stallion had quite the slight case of his right eye being wonky- but his eye had snapped in his head when i had tried initially to put them in.
      Mam who hates the sight of him was the one to notice and point it out to be honest, i knew something was up but with how hard it is to move his eyes i didnt want to... eventually it bugged me enough.

      When i next decided to paint him i stripped his head down and attacked him with a hairdryer (hes Vinyl xD) it took about half an hour for the material of his eye pockets to soften up and sort his eyes out. I had actually bruised my thumb previously trying to move his eye O.o

      Ly has his eyes bluetacked in- they move waaayyy too much so i need to cram more tack in there (works just as well as putty and he is only small) when i change his wig over xD
      He was so crosseyed when i first did his eyes, it took me too long to get them decent- my fingers arent small enough for his head xD
       
    15. Seeing a photo of a doll with misaligned eyes causes me to cringe. I see it in some company photos as well as amateur and it drives me nuts.

      When setting eyes, it's helpful to put a ruler or other straight edge across the eyes and line the pupils up according to how much of each pupil is above and below the line. Since I like to have my dolls' eyes pointing to the side it can be hard to align the eyes, but the straight edge method works well. For left and right alignment I have to rely on looking at them straight on with a bright light and judging how much of each pupil is being shown.
       
    16. Urgh, I DEFINITELY can't stand it. I understand that it's hard getting the eyes right, and it's easy to not notice wonky eyed stares until after the photo's taken but....do you have to upload them here with the wonky eyes? ;_; There are so many opportunities for you to notice and correct it if you're doing a photoshoot that when I see it in the gallery, I'm distracted by the quality of the rest of the shoot because it's like the uploader didn't really care what they were doing. I know that's not always the case, but...it just feels like it. D:

      But like I said before...I totally understand how hard eye positioning can be. See the sig? I've got a tender eyed DoD. I've YET to figure out how to reliably position her eyes. :doh
       
    17. Amen! :3nodding:
      I also replace my Volks LE's eyes right away and it's a good thing I do. My Michele had one serious wall-eye and it was the most difficult eye & hot glue removal I've ever had.

      I think half the time people either don't notice how wrong their doll's eye placement is or they just decided to not care after trying to align them properly for an hour. And there are some dolls and eyes that will never get perfect alignment. The socket is at a funny angle, the doll's left eye shape doesn't match the right, the pupils start looking more narrow from certain angles. It's tricky. I always look at my dolls from the left, right and upside down before resorting to taking a picture.

      I also get lazy and try to only shoot doll pics from the side or at a 3/4 angle when I notice one eye is off or one has sunken back into the head entirely. :sweat
       
    18. If the eye placement is really obviously off and you KNOW they had to have noticed, even if just when they took the first picture, then I do get abit OCD about it. If it's abit off I'm not so bothered, I've fought with dolls and given up. My current little boys eyes are too big and the resin is thicker inside his head on one side, so one eye sits further back than it should. I try to work around that for now, his new eyes are on the way and I'll have to learn to get used to glass eyes then. @w@;
       
    19. I always notice that if a doll has two different eyes, they look cross eyed to me, even if it is meant to be artsy. I *want* to like them like that... but I just can't. I think that the whole "windows to the soul" aspect of eyes makes it that much more important to me.

      (I DO realize that dolls don't have souls... but don't they just seem like they do sometimes? ;)