Thread: Need moving eyes!

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I am making a large painting that I want to have look like an old, painted portrait of some long-forgotten relative, and I want to cut out the eyes and have moving eyes behind the painting - to simulate the idea that someone is peeking out of the painting - just like the old movies.

I have everything except the eyes.

I LOVE Lauriebeast's moving eyes portrait, and the fact that they are motorized is PERFECT, but I can't build something even remotely like this. The stuff I am finding are all servo-controlled that would require a program, etc... not suitable for the project.

Where could I find eyes that would just slowly move randomly around, that could just be mounted behind and plugged in? Does anyone make/sell these that are just plug and play?

I guess I could go with the ping pong balls and do the "eyes follow you" route, but I really had my heart set on the eyes actually moving...

Maybe hack a Gemmy Animated Skull? The eyes move back and forth!

I would do this effect with a reindeer motor. You could take 2 basic eyes and mount them on brass rod or something similar. with a u bend directly behind and centered between the eyes you could hook up the crank arm of the reindeer motor to move them slowly back and forth. I have seen the actual plans for this idea someplace and sfter searching for a half hour i cant find them right now. It really is a fairly easy thing to build though. The reindeer motors are fairly cheap also.

Yea, Spookineer built the eye mechanism for Laurie's portrait. He's a mechanical whiz!
Hey FG--One of the projects I have in the back burner of my brain was to try to make a simpler (poor man's) moving eye mechanism. I've got some ideas, but I haven't tried to start building it, though.
Were you wanting the eyes just to move left and right? Or left, right, up and down?
Also how much room would there be behind the painting?

Originally Posted by DaveintheGrave

Yea, Spookineer built the eye mechanism for Laurie's portrait. He's a mechanical whiz!
Hey FG--One of the projects I have in the back burner of my brain was to try to make a simpler (poor man's) moving eye mechanism. I've got some ideas, but I haven't tried to start building it, though.
Were you wanting the eyes just to move left and right? Or left, right, up and down?
Also how much room would there be behind the painting?

DaveInTheGrave - The portrait is being painted on a quarter inch piece of plywood. I would think it would need 4-5 inches clearance for the eyeball housing. I don't plan on hanging the picture flush against the wall once finished - sort of planned on leaning it up on the mantel, maybe securing it with picture wire and having it lean out from the top with the bottom resting on the ledge (small mantel depth - less than 6 inches), and then I was going to drape the painting with black bunting (like they used to do for funerals) to hide the backside if it was really hanging out from the wall.

I would love to have one that did the random stuff, (stopped for a few seconds, moved whichever way, then another) but the effect would be just as good if they just did a slow movement back and forth.

Let me know if you do start working on anything like this; I'd be interested!

Spookineer is a genius, and Lauriebeast is a fantastic artist... that project is what got me started thinking about this one.



kprimm - I can almost visualize what you're talking about with the simple left-right using the deer motor. Would this be a similar concept to the grave poppers where you use a full circular motion motor to create the up/down of the grave popper? I need to look at that to see if it makes sense. It sucks that I can NEVER find discarded deers or any other type of goodies like what I read about on these boards!

Mr. G - I may end up hacking up a prop for it's eyes (sounds so ghoulish ) but the disadvantage is that most of the props that I've seen are motion/sound activated, and I'm not sure how well that would work either.

Thanks for the responses - I'm so technologically challenged, I just don't even know where to begin...

If you look on Craigslist for free microwaves and find any that have rotating tables, you are halfway there to having moving eyes. If you want to buy the microwave table motors I assume there is some place that sells them, but I always look for the free (other then gas money to go pick them up) way to make things. If you just want the eyes to move back and fourth then you just need one little microwave table motor. If you want the random effect like Spookineer then you would need two.


Here is the link to Spookineer's moving eye page.
http://spookineering.com/motoreyes.html

If you take a ping pong ball and cut it in half, paint your eye in the inside of the ping pong ball and attach that to the back of the painting where the eyes are, the eyes will appear to follow you! So I here anyway.

Originally Posted by yardhauntjunkie

If you look on Craigslist for free microwaves and find any that have rotating tables, you are halfway there to having moving eyes. If you want to buy the microwave table motors I assume there is some place that sells them, but I always look for the free (other then gas money to go pick them up) way to make things. If you just want the eyes to move back and fourth then you just need one little microwave table motor. If you want the random effect like Spookineer then you would need two.


Here is the link to Spookineer's moving eye page.
http://spookineering.com/motoreyes.html

I could find the motors, but knowing what to do with them is the problem. I may see if I can locate a motor (just joined FreeCycle) and just start bugging everyone to walk me through this.

Originally Posted by Homestead Haunt

If you take a ping pong ball and cut it in half, paint your eye in the inside of the ping pong ball and attach that to the back of the painting where the eyes are, the eyes will appear to follow you! So I here anyway.

That does work. It's a really nifty and no-tech solution, but I hope that there is enough time to try to rig up real eyeballs and have them moving - this is my back-up plan, tho.

I can live with being a back up plan!

Hey and I learned how they do that following eye trick. Thanks HomesteadHaunt!