Eye Alignment II – Focus and Side Glance

Rosslyn · May 8, 2016

Rosslyn submitted a new tutorial:

Eye Alignment II- Focus and Side Glance

This is a long awaited sequel to Eye Alignment and Human Expressions
(I had to make this one without photoshop so it's less fancy but it's been years so I thought I'd better just do what I could.)
Focusing eyes can be a matter of micro-millimeters, and unfortunately I do it mostly by long trained practice, moving the eyes until they are "looking at me realistically". I'm going to try, though, to see if I can explain some of what I am thinking when I do that.

Here's Aithne, my Unoa Sist Hybrid. She's a slim mini sized doll and her eyes have a slightly small iris. She's got her eyes with the iris a proper placement in relation to the eyelids, but you will notice she still looks slightly vague. (excuse her hair, it's her "I woke up like this" look.) Her eyes are currently focused straight forward. This gives a doll a sort of empty look.
Then I nudged her eyes a teeny tiny bit inward.

And suddenly she's looking AT me, not through me.

Here's why:

If you cut away a faceplate and look at a doll face from the top down, it would look like this. The eyes are shown in blue, and the lines of sight are the dark red dotted lines.
If the doll's eyes are facing dead straight forward, the line of sight is not focused. You have two eyes because typically able people use their binocular vision to calculate depth of field- how far away a thing is from their face.
(This is why the myth of one-eyed swashbucklers is absurd. Without the two points of reference given by two typically-functioning eyes, a human has not much depth perception to speak of, and can barely catch a thing tossed to them let alone sword-fight. Some of you may have limited or no vision in one eye and can probably attest to this.)
So when the eyes are straight forward they/re not aimed at anything, as it were. When you are looking at another person or anything nearish to you, your eyes are ever so slightly pointed inward, as shown above by the lines of sight. This gives them a focused look. The further away the target of focus is, the less this is the case, but if you want a doll to appear to look at the viewer, you do not want them to stare straight ahead.

Another example, a little more extreme. This is Fayeth, a Resinsoul Ju, with rather large-iris eyes. Most RS dolls have eye sockets that make their eyes sit like this:

And it's generally not what you want, unless your character is wall-eyed naturally. See how the irises are in the right position against the eyelid in the up and down direction, but on a side to side plane these eyes still aren't pointing AT the viewer?

Adjusted for the Lines of Sight to be Focused, as shown in the diagram above:

Now she's looking AT the camera.
I know it's not much of an explanation, but I hope it helps.

One more thing: Side Glance.

Using everything we've covered so far, I position eyes to look sideways by turning each one until it's looking at me sideways, by doing this trick- Turn their head first.

If I tilt Fayeth's body away from me and her face toward me, then turn her eyes until they're both focused at me, the end result is a Side Glance.
B aware that both eyes will not be turned the same amount. Even human eyes can't really do this- it's an optical illusion that makes you think they do. If I tilt Fayeth's face down so you can see how far each eye is turned to the side, you can see this.

Hope this helps!
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Read more about this tutorial here...

Haru's cat · Jun 8, 2016

This is so helpful!! Thank you for doing this, and thank you for doing the original post as well! This is a great continuation!

Rosslyn · Jun 9, 2016

Haru's cat said:

This is so helpful!! Thank you for doing this, and thank you for doing the original post as well! This is a great continuation!
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Oh I am so glad it seems helpful! I wasn't sure how to explain most of it but I tried.

mimimontoya · Apr 6, 2017

Thank you so much for both of these eye tutorials @Rosslyn , after choosing the right eye size, everyone should hurry directly to these tutorials! Sure cure for that thousand-yard stare.
I didn't realize how differently oriented both eyes should be for side glancing, I'm admittedly lazy with that because of my Unoa eye mechanism.
Any further info for more slanted, almond shaped eyes and also smaller eyes/eye openings? My Souldoll Agnetha and Angel of Dream Min each have eye shapes that give me some trouble so I'd love some more tips for that if you have some. Thanks again!

JJhandmade · Apr 9, 2017

Thank you! I have some new eyes on order and will definitely follow your tute to make sure I get it right the first time.

Yunfei · Apr 9, 2017

Thank you! These are wonderful tutorials.

JJhandmade · Apr 14, 2017

How did I go?

I've ordered some new, smaller eyes which I think will be tricker to align.

TomB · Apr 14, 2017

Nicely done!
Thank you.

llmitchell · May 19, 2017

This is super helpful! After taking a few art classes, I know at least a little how to draw eyes looking at me, but it's so different going from 2D to 3D. This is awesome! Thanks!

Rosslyn · May 19, 2017

mimimontoya said:

Thank you so much for both of these eye tutorials @Rosslyn , after choosing the right eye size, everyone should hurry directly to these tutorials! Sure cure for that thousand-yard stare.
I didn't realize how differently oriented both eyes should be for side glancing, I'm admittedly lazy with that because of my Unoa eye mechanism.
Any further info for more slanted, almond shaped eyes and also smaller eyes/eye openings? My Souldoll Agnetha and Angel of Dream Min each have eye shapes that give me some trouble so I'd love some more tips for that if you have some. Thanks again!
Expand

You're welcome! I should probably do another version with smaller eyes, once I am less busy, but it's generally the same.

JJhandmade said:

Thank you! I have some new eyes on order and will definitely follow your tute to make sure I get it right the first time.
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You're welcome!

Yunfei said:

Thank you! These are wonderful tutorials.
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Glad they are useful!

JJhandmade said:

How did I go?

I've ordered some new, smaller eyes which I think will be tricker to align.
Expand

Looking good for focus! You might want to try tilting them up juuuuuust a hair and see how that affects the look as well. Smaller eyes in a larger eyewell can be tricky but the idea is the same.

TomB said:

Nicely done!
Thank you.
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You're welcome!

llmitchell said:

This is super helpful! After taking a few art classes, I know at least a little how to draw eyes looking at me, but it's so different going from 2D to 3D. This is awesome! Thanks!
Expand

There is a bit of a gap from 2d to 3d but once it's set out clear I feel like you suddenly recognize what you already knew. Cheers!

LavenderBats · Jul 5, 2017

This was beyond helpful! Thank you so much.

Rosslyn · Jul 5, 2017

LavenderBats said:

This was beyond helpful! Thank you so much.
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glad it works for you!

ledniir · Jul 20, 2017

Thank you so much for this! It is not only helpful for my dolls, but also for when I draw people.

Rosslyn · Jul 20, 2017

ledniir said:

Thank you so much for this! It is not only helpful for my dolls, but also for when I draw people.
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You're very welcome! It does also help with art, that's for sure.

KEnokibara · Mar 19, 2018

Wow I never thought of that! I usually just mess around with them until they seem natural enough

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