Eyeballs for special effects, Halloween, or animatronics really cheap.

I've always been really into special effects.  My dream job would be a special effects engineer.  One of the items that I always wanted to make was the super realistic eyeballs you see in horror films.  One motivation for this is that I want to get into animatronics. If the eyes don't look real that's pretty much it.

     Okay, now the problem;  My budget is severely limited.  I got online and looked for a really cheap way to make my own special effect eyes.  OMG! I suppose if you make 80K+ a year then $45 to make a set of eyes may seem cheap.  Or maybe if your charging a hundred bucks for your set of molds to make acrylic eyes then yeah maybe.  Nah, I needed something really cheap.

     I got to thinking, if I'm in this situation then there are probably a lot of other people who might be too.  So, I decided to do the searching for all of us and bring special effect eyes within reach of the poor college student, the underemployed budding indy filmmaker, the person who is sick of their next door neighbor always having cooler (is that a word?) Halloween decorations.  What follows is the path which led me to what I feel was a satisfactory end result, especially considering the cash outlay.  If I did the math correctly it has currently cost about 10 dollars a pair for the eyes and I still have enough supplies to make 4 more pairs without paying any more.  If I get some more of the bases and some more acrylic paint, I could drive that cost down even further since I have enough of everything else to make another 20 pairs or so.

Step 1 Safety is always step # 1

Since there are younger and inexperienced tinkerers about... This Instructable includes the use of sharp tools, fire, hot plastic, flammable liquids etc... Please if you are not familiar with tool or material safety, get that way before attempting this Instructable.  Never work with flame around open containers of flammable liquids, heating plastic with flame is dangerous and may release fumes which may be harmful to your or others health, never cut toward yourself and always work on a stable uncluttered surface.

My uncle taught us this.

Rule # 1 Don't hurt yourself
Rule # 2 Don't hurt anyone else
Rule # 3 Don't damage property
Rule # 4 Have fun but don't break rules 1 through 3

Comments

[rosemarybeetle]

These are great. Great instructable
I especially like the simple use of the plastic disc for a lens (especially as its of another type of eye!) I use marker pen on deodorant balls.
These have the advantage that they come with their own sockets if you cut the bottle carefully. They can be popped in or out too
I have a blog with some stuff about this:Making Weird Stuff blog

[fuzvulf]

Thanks for all the great comments folks. My health has been not so good and what good days I have been having I have been spending getting necessities done and spending time with family. You are all great. Keep building.

[tinker234]

wow just wow i love them this will be the best part of any robot they look very real look at this and put togeter link ww.wowwee.com/en/products/toys/robots/robotics/femisapien

[Maddington]

I made some! They turned out faaaaantastic, except I used ping pong balls (they don't melt well so I just popped them in a bit and sanded) and resin instead of a googly eye. Not painted as well as yours though - I used gouache which was a mistake - water soluble.

Thanks so much! Great 'ible. They're gonna look awesome on my puppet. Plus, I can freak out my flat/class mates heheheeee...!

[kaitlyn.]

cool I would like to try this is there any chance that post a clearer up close photograph of the finished eyeball thanks :)

[galadriel]

Wow.  You put tons of work into these and they look fantastic.