Dolls with multiple sets of eyes?

You'll get a lot of practice installing eyes!

It's a fun idea, though. Or would photoshopping in the different eyes (if it's just colors) be easier?

 

Sounds cool : )
Are you thinking of really fancy custom eyes? I have a few really fun independent artist-made resin eyes that I bought when I first started and still like, but sort of wish they had the white part made of something else. After a few years the whites of the eyes have mellowed to a color a bit too close to the resin color of the doll I bought them for.

 

Different eyes for different mental states sounds very expressive! Like the thing where characters in animation have not just their pupils but their whole iris shrink when they're having a very strong emotion.

 

Nice! Something you could do if the smaller pupils in the same size are just a tiny bit too much/not enough, is to try the next eye size up or down. The different sizes 12/14/16 ect. usually have different base iris sizes that can fall between the regular and small pupil sizes of the next size over.

 

I've done something like this before. I used to have a character that when she was in her home world her eyes were different from when she was in our world. It was kind of a pain switching eyes all the time but I also wouldn't have wanted her any other way!

 

I don't think this is strange at all. I think swapping out eyes can be a fun way to give a doll more variety!

 

My two earliest dolls don't have a fixed eye color. It's fun swapping them out as my mood dictates.

 

I do this! I have a character who wears contacts and part of his style is that he'll use different colored contacts to suit his mood/outfit. So he had a pair for his natural brown eyes, then a blue pair and a green pair that are meant for him plus he's free to steal eyes from anyone else when I feel like it, lol.

He also has two heads though for different expressions so maybe he's a little spoiled.

I like having the multiple sets of eyes because that way he can look different while he's on display and not just in photos. It's also a good excuse to own a few different pair of beautifully made eyes.

 

I have a little over 50 pairs of eyes in various styles, materials and colors. I like to color-coordinate the eyes with the wig and outfit the doll is wearing.

 

I own a lot of pairs of eyes for most of my earlier BJD, but mostly because the option for custom eyes didn't come until much later for me (it wasn't a thing back in the dark ages of this hobby). Some of the first I got were by Masterpiece, but their irises are too large for my taste, although that was all there was back then (giant irised doll eyes of any sort). I still haven't managed to get the correct eye colors nor iris sizes for most of my current BJD many years later, but I kind of lost interest in purchasing BJD and related accessories a long time ago. Most of my dolls based on OCs are vampires, so most of them were supposed to have a few pairs of different colored eyes I could switch between, to show their "mood," but I never got proper ones for any (due to lack of custom eye maker in the earlier years, than later me losing interest in BJD in general).

I did get a new BJD after more than a decade of not wanting to purchase anymore, just winter of last year. He is meant to be a ghoul (from a popular Japanese franchise), so I was hoping to get a few pairs of eyes for him to represent his various phases within the story that already exists for him (or just for fun, as I often do with most of my dolls with switchable eyes). However, he is a tiny mature doll, just finding basic blue eyes for him has proven to be a royal pain in the gut-hole! I still haven't lost all hope, because I did manage to find some kind of suitable eyes for now. At least the iris are a size I find suitable (I lean towards sanpaku) even if the color is not perfectly what I wanted for him. I still need to find (or make one of my own) ghoul eye for him. I keep procrastinating on that latter one, because I know if finding basic blue eyes was a pain in the gut-hole, finding black sclera eyes with red tiny iris that match his blue-gray ones, is going to be an ordeal and a half. DX

 

I got two pairs of eyes for the Oswin I'm currently waiting on as he's supposed to be an OC whose eyes change color while using magic. Rin and Mika both use 20-22 mm anime style eyes so there's just a floating eye inventory for them.

 

I have since sold the doll, but I had a character who loved colored contacts, the weirder, the better. I probably had at least a dozen pairs of eyes for them!

and I’m not sure if it counts, but my boy Amir has one dark green eye, one light green, so I had to buy two sets to get the right look.

 

I like glass eyes, they're like candy. Have to resist buying ones I don't need
I'm putting together an Allen Walker character doll though and he's gotta have so many eyes, A silver pair, a red eye, a black&red eye, and of course... gold

 

Your project sounds really fun! I am planning to get different pairs of eyes for my Dollfie Dream. She is a vampire and her eye color changes when she reveals her true nature. I also recently ordered heart eyes and watery eyes to give her different expressions.

 

I'm totally not one for switching eyes out, it's a pain to do get right and I really cannot think of my dolls as having any other eye color, so my dolls tend to have one pair they stick to forever.
The only exception to this has been my SwD Megu as I've been struggling to find eyes that fit her eye wells nicely. You can barely see whatever eyes she has in even with an up-nose shot so the color/design is basically for kicks (she's got some really beautiful rose iris eyes in that a friend sent me now, not that anyone would be able to tell)

 

I do that too, I have many pairs of eyes I swap out :p