Hopefully this question isn't too open-ended or vague, but I've been creating suits for a few years now and still find myself frustrated frequently over eyes, and it's starting to make me feel dumb.
What I want to know is how do you guys pattern/build your eyes in order to get clean and consistent results? Particularly in toony suits.
Frequent problems I run into are:
-Sockets ending up smaller than intended from furring into them when I fur before adding eyes.
-Eyes being eaten by fur and looking small and ridiculous when I install them before furring.
-Sockets being asymmetrical and warping the eyes, and general asymmetry; suits often have bad and good photographic angles because of the eyes.
-Eyes being generally difficult to assemble, edges coming apart. I've tried the thin foamies sheets, which respond well to adhesives, but are so flexible they get warped and bent, and I've tried thin styrene plastic, but it was extremely resistant to adhesives and fell apart constantly. Am I missing something regarding materials people usually use?
I'll put my pride aside and give some examples of my woes (if I can use lj images):
Here's a suit that I installed the eyes before furring:
![]()
The foamwork was designed to have really huge, cute eyes.
And after furring they were eaten by the fur:
![]()
And here's a suit I furred and have yet to put eyes in:
Again, I want big, cute eyes
![]()
And after furring I'm left with tiny, beady sockets:
![]()
What it usually ends with is me installing extremely shallow eyes at the front of the sockets to try to get the size back. They lose all follow, and any angle other than straight on looks bad:
![]()
I feel like there's some sort of fursuit building memo I missed, because after all this time I've improved leaps and bounds in everything but eyes. I still find them unpredictable and extremely frustrating. Am I using the wrong materials? Is there some patterning secret? I really hope someone can help me out! I'm pretty self conscious of my work, so to post all this is an act of desperation for me, lol. Thanks!
What I want to know is how do you guys pattern/build your eyes in order to get clean and consistent results? Particularly in toony suits.
Frequent problems I run into are:
-Sockets ending up smaller than intended from furring into them when I fur before adding eyes.
-Eyes being eaten by fur and looking small and ridiculous when I install them before furring.
-Sockets being asymmetrical and warping the eyes, and general asymmetry; suits often have bad and good photographic angles because of the eyes.
-Eyes being generally difficult to assemble, edges coming apart. I've tried the thin foamies sheets, which respond well to adhesives, but are so flexible they get warped and bent, and I've tried thin styrene plastic, but it was extremely resistant to adhesives and fell apart constantly. Am I missing something regarding materials people usually use?
I'll put my pride aside and give some examples of my woes (if I can use lj images):
Here's a suit that I installed the eyes before furring:
The foamwork was designed to have really huge, cute eyes.
And after furring they were eaten by the fur:
And here's a suit I furred and have yet to put eyes in:
Again, I want big, cute eyes
And after furring I'm left with tiny, beady sockets:
What it usually ends with is me installing extremely shallow eyes at the front of the sockets to try to get the size back. They lose all follow, and any angle other than straight on looks bad:
I feel like there's some sort of fursuit building memo I missed, because after all this time I've improved leaps and bounds in everything but eyes. I still find them unpredictable and extremely frustrating. Am I using the wrong materials? Is there some patterning secret? I really hope someone can help me out! I'm pretty self conscious of my work, so to post all this is an act of desperation for me, lol. Thanks!