Rush Revisited, and Eyeballs

I was a MASSIVE Rush fan in high school, and many of their songs instantly take me back to that Neil Peart-idolizing, Ayn Rand-discussing fog of youth.  This song is particularly special, not only because I grew up in YYZ, but because that infamous Morse Code Airport Intro always seemed like such a cool idea.  No?

Anyway, here it is played on a Yamaha organ by an 11-year old girl.  This has nothing to do with stop motion, but there’s a little girl character in my film, and…  OK it has nothing to do with anything.  I just like it:

and, some eyeballs…

(Click to enlarge.)

Here’re the eyeballs I’ll be using for all 4 puppets.  These are little glass beads that are about 7mm in diameter.  They’re a little uneven in consistency — some areas are more transluscent than others.  I picked out beads that were more solid white to use for the eyes, but some subtle mottling makes them a little more interesting.

I filled the holes in with Milliput, which is an epoxy putty from the UK, and a little hard to find here.  (I eventually happened upon some at an awesome little hobby store here in Toronto, called Wheels and Wings.)  I could have used plumber’s epoxy for this, but Milliput works better for the finer-detailed things because it takes longer to dry and is easier to sculpt.  I fill the hole almost completely, leaving a tiny indent where the pupil is, so that I’ll be able to move the eyeballs around in their sockets later.

Then I paint the beads with acrylics, looking through a magnifying glass so I can see what I’m doing — these eyes are tiny!  The final touches (not yet done in this photo) are to tidy up the edge of the irises with a fine-pointed wooden sculpting tool, and then to put a clear coat of polyurethane over the top hemispheres, to seal the paint and add some overall gloss.

0 thoughts on “Rush Revisited, and Eyeballs

  1. stephanie dudley

    Awesome. It’d be great to get a huge tub of this stuff because I go through a lot of epoxy putty… those tiny tubes are expensive. I hope their shipping costs to Canada aren’t too crazy, but this Magic Sculpt stuff looks perfect.

    Reply
  2. Mike Brent

    Wow…. I was actually listening to Rush when I started reading this post! Hemispheres. That little tyke is amazing!!!!

    Hmmmm… of course you know 2112 was based on Rand’s writings…. yeah, I’m sure you do.

    Reply
  3. stephanie dudley

    Hhehe… what are the odds!

    Oddly enough I was out for dinner last night and a friend mentioned he read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in high school just to figure out why all his friends started turning into assholes after reading her books. That might be the first time anybody’s mentioned Objectivism since high school, for me… I never really liked her, but it sure was a hot topic of conversation back then. Maybe because of Rush, who knows. 😉

    Reply

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