Re: [SGII] The Eyes Have It.

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002 13:21:02 -0500 (EST), "John Crimmins"
<johncrim@voicenet.com> wrote:

> Thus, a survey of sorts: You Stargrunt players, how many of you bother
> painting the eyes on your miniatures?

I do, but it depends on the miniature.

When I had GW figures, the Orks and Squads looked much better after
painting
eyes. I haven't bothered painting them on my GZG figures, though
(Japanese
mercs are squinting, most of the NSL panzergrenadiers have goggles). I
will
paint eyes on my Jagers when I get to them, and I do paint eyes on my
Ral
Partha Call of Cthulhu figures.

> 1) Paint the eye socket a very dark shade of the skin color -- usually
medium
> brown for caucasian figures.

I do that.

> 2) Paint the eyeballs a light gray -- white is too bright.

I usually use white, myself, but either works fine.

> 3) Dot the first eyeball with a point of black, resulting in a perfect
eye,
> the Platonic Ideal of a 25mm miniature eye, an eye so perfect as to
make 
> Leonardo himself weep with envy.

This is where it breaks down. I tried a dot and got the same thing you
did.
Instead, I do a black spot so that the middle of the eye is black, from
one
eye lid to another. When you look at it, only the outside and inside
corners
of the eye are white. When you back up, the effect looks pretty good.

> As you can imagine, this makes painting any decent sized force into an
almost
> Sisyphean task. 

Most of my eye painting takes, on average, maybe 2 to 5 minutes per
figure.
Sometimes much, much less (you get the spot just the way you want it). I
like
the end result, and no one looks like they just got startled in the
shower.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
unimaginable mortician was revealed!"