Dan Batts kindly shares his novel way of making nice, round pupils...

Here is an alternative process for making eyes for your stop motion puppets kindly shared from Dan Batts:

Most people are probably able to paint the puppet eyes freehand with a brush, but if you are like me and have a bit too much shake in the brush painting something that small, maybe this technique will help you create a cleaner painted eye.The first step is taking two layers of masking tape (one was too flimsy and was hard to punch a hole through).

Using a leather hole punch which aren't too expensive, I had an old one, you can choose several different hole size which is useful if you have puppets of different scales and need more than one type of eyeball. The tricky part is to press hard when punching the hole. Because the tape is thin you can't feel the hole being punched like you can in something stiffer like leather or cardboard. What I did was gently move the tape back and forth until it pivoted freely, then I knew the punch was through. This may take a few tries to get a clean hole. Be careful to release the punch so not to tear the tape.

Next you press the tape on the ball firmly at the punched hole, you don't want to press the tape down around the ball, this will cause creases and the paint will get underneath.You'll also want to add another piece of tape to each side of the the section with the punched hole to protect from over spray from the paint getting on the ball.

If you are using a ball with a hole already in it like a bead, line up the hole in the ball with the center of the punched hole in the tape.

Then I used a small can of model paint to spray the black color. It's best to make a few lite sprays instead of one heavy one. Give the paint a good hour to dry, it won't take that long but if you remove the tape before it's completely dry it will smear.

Once the tape is removed I sprayed the whole eye with polyurethane to give the paint some protection during animation. The balls are slick so the paint would eventually rub off or at least be damaged during a lot of use.

Gloss poly will give a sheen or wet look too adding some realism.

Dan Batts:

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