Doll eyes - big or small irises / sleeping heads?

I do small irises ALWAYS, small as I can get 'em. I actually started making my own resin eyes just so I could make suitably small irises/low domes. IMO small irises look a lot cuter than big ones. Bigger irises sometimes end up looking fishy/inhuman to me because they tend to obscure more of the sclera.

As for closed eyes, I just put a white marble in there just in case.

 

I'm always on the smaller side, same reason as @0bsequi0us. Maybe it's because I look for realism more than fantasy, so I prefer the iris to look a tad small than too big.
By the way, @0bsequi0us your last sentence made me laugh more than it should. I imagined "As for closed eyes, I just put a white marble in there just in case... just in case they open their eyes suddenly" Omg but then what? It will look at you with blank eyes! I didn't want to sleep tonight anyway. LOL! (jk, of course!)

 

I think it just really depends on the look you are going for. Yeah, small irises give more realistic feel in human dolls. Would say it's other way around in pet/anthro dolls

 

I always preferred smaller irises in my more realistic-ish dolls, but back in the day small irises weren't a thing. I only got some custom eyes with small irises until 2010, and even those weren't 100% to my liking. Before that it was Eyeco-eyes, which are pretty much still larger than what I ideally want in my realistic-ish dolls. However, I have to agree with previous comments that it depends on the dolls aesthetics. I own a wide variety of dolls because I love a wide variety of art styles; I have a traditional art background, but grew up watching and loving Japanese animation and video games. So I own dolls ranging from realistic-ish to very anime and everything in between. I wouldn't use realistic looking or sized irises in my anime-ish sculpts, for example. Similarly, after being stuck with giant irises in some of my more realistic-looking head sculpts for years, I am tired of them wearing irises that are too big to be believable. I'm not a fan of resin-eyes, so I am stuck for now with the ones I already have. I hope in the future there will be more options for custom-made eyes that aren't resin. I'm a lazy bum, so I don't think I would ever learn the skill of any glass making craft, to believe I could make my own and like I said, I am not a fan of resin eyes.

 

I have mostly semi-realistic sculpts so I prefer smaller irises, but I do love the cute factor of bigger and cartoony eyes. However, I also have a realistic sculpt (Soulkid Shaun) with these ridiculous large purple eyes and it really gives him a mood. Mostly he looks punchdrunk but it can also make him unsettling because of the strangeness of these almost animalistic giant purple and black orbs. In some lights he looks like he's giving a 50-yard stare. Very neat effect, kinda unsettling. I want to change them for something more natural but I worry I'll lose the neato-factor.

 

I think eyes are a really powerful tool in customization! I prefer small irises, personally but it depends on your goal.

 

I like both. Half my dolls have medium-big iris (I have a Supia Zion boy and he has regular 16 mm gray glass eyes, and they look big on him but I like it, it's not realistic maybe but they make him look kind and human to me I don't know why), and the other half has small iris (some need 12 mm size eyes and/or need low dome to fit properly, one of them has half sleeping eyes). Half of them have glass eyes, and the others acrylic (I don't like the gummy polyurethane ones).
Small iris gives dolls a cold look, I like it but I don't want all my dolls to look sullen and cynical.
I think the eyes must go accord to the dolls character.

 

I usually prefer smaller low dome eyes because most of my dolls are older teens or adult with narrow 10-14mm eyes where the sclera wouldn’t show much at all with large irises. My only exceptions are anthros, babies/small child dolls or dolls who have very large eyes—tiny iris in a doll with wide 20mm eyes will look more creepy than realistic.

 

I think my msd girl looks great in 16mm and I can see plenty of sclera. Typically I like bigger irisis and they suit her well. I suspect if I got a doll with smaller eyes I’ll start to notice a difference and will have to go on the hunt for a doll eyes with a smaller iris.

I don’t own any sleeping face plates but if I did I think I wouldn’t bother with the eyes. Mostly because I’d definitely forget they were in there lol!

 

For the most part I prefer bigger eyes; nearly all my dolls wear regular size 16mm eyes and I think it looks best in them. I like the more stylized look. However, it does depend on the doll; I had a hell of a time finding eyes that would fit or looked good in my Ringdoll Wolf until I decided on low dome small iris eyes, and I intend my upcoming Crimson Doll Scott to wear small irises because he's an older, shifty sort of guy and wouldn't look good with kawaii big eyes, lol.

I'm not a big fan of realistic eyes with a lot of detail, though. They just seem uncanny to me. Even my small iris eyes are on the more stylized side, no pupils and sparkles and stuff like that.

 

I'm a little bit of both, all depends what look I'm going for. For MSDs, if they have those large eye-holes I don't mind their irises to be on the large side, for SDs I'd definitely go with small iris. Sadly, all depending on where you get your eyes, you can't really chose what size iris you want always. So if they only have one size iris that is what I will have to live with getting, and I'm not that nitpicky that I wont buy anything but eyes where I have every imaginable option to chose from.
For sleeping heads, all depending on how closed the eyes are I don't really care about iris size when you can't even see it.

 

small and regular is good for me. I really don't like the big irises that leave almost no eye whites.

 

For sleeping I suppose it depends on how big a gap there is, and how you photograph them. If it’s so tiny a slit as to make installing eyelashes a nightmare, I can’t see that having eyes in or not really mattering. On the other hand, if they look more like the eye is slightly open, then pick whatever looks best.

I like small iris eyes in my Granado guy, but my Volks girl would look like she was having a really bad acid trip if I used too small an iris, so it really depends on the sculpt.

 

In the old days (I sound like a winey old-man), people used to refer to half-opened-eyed head sculpts as "dreaming" and the completely closed eyed ones as "sleeping" head sculpts. So I thought you meant if people used eyes in the latter. I thought I was an even bigger weirdo because I've never used them in my one and only sleepy head, but I do use eyes in the two "dreaming" ones I own. Although, I guess it is also a matter of preference and how big the opening in the "dreaming" eyes are. The two "dreaming" sculpts I own have pretty big eye-openings, so it would be weird not to have eyes in them (staring at empty holes). Personally, even if my dreaming heads had tiny slits for eyes, I would still have eyes in them. Unless they were completely closed (like a sleeping sculpt). I think I would feel a bit weird taking photos of a head sculpt with empty eye holes. Not creepy, nor scary just weird. [font]

 

Most of my crew have more realistic features, thus narrower eyes and the need for irises that are in-scale. Which...a lot of regular sized irises don't really work out that well with.

Searching for eyes for me can be a bit of an adventure with my wonky eyed crew. Tahmos especially has smaller eyes that can get gappy with anything smaller than a 12mm, but looks really odd and cartoony with anything in the conventional scale that's meant to fit (12-14mm). Best I've come up with is Soulinabox's new smaller iris eyes in 14mm so far. With some exceptions, it's the same for the rest of my crew.

Eventually my plan is to learn how to make my own, so I can customize the size and color as much as I want (or need) to. Once I'm finished with my degree and get more free time, I'll definitely be having at it

 

I'm not generally too concerned with realism, so I like a medium to larger iris! As for sleepy/dreaming heads, I reckon I wouldn't put any eyes in a head with completely closed eyes, but if there is even a tiny slit, I would want them there! I have a dreaming head coming in soon, but her eyes are still relatively wide open, so it would be very weird for her not to have any haha.

 

It depends on what doll I am working with. My boy Azrael has small Irises for He is a more realistic doll, My MSD Girl Jo is more anime base. I see people open the eyes on sleeping heads.