Thanks so much to all who replied to my earlier "eye" post!
In looking through this site, I found the "scaler". That drove me to the bathroom mirror with a ruler, to measure my visible eyeball top-to-bottom (height, not width/length). My supposedly-normal eye is 5/16" high, i.e. ~0.3125" (not to put too fine a point on it), from upper eyelid edge to lower eyelid edge.
SO - in the var scales, the area covered by the iris would be approximately:
1/72: 0.004"
1/48: 0.006"
1/35: 0.009"
1/32: 0.010"
1/24: 0.013"
Yes, those values are in thousands of an inch. For reference, a healthy human eye can discern a misalignment between two printed letters of as little a 0.010". That's a mighty small eyeball to paint! This reminds me of the aircraft modellers hashing over whether panel lines are really visible at scale; e.g., a 1/8" (0.125") gap in 1:1 is less than 0.002" in 1/72 scale, and ~0.0025" in 1/48 scale. Technically, you really wouldn't be able to see the line; you can, however, see tonal differences between adjoining panels, and since you know the line is there, you imagine you can see it.
The purist may ignore the actual lines and focus on distinguishing a panel edge from its neighbors.
On the other hand, the eye also expects to see what it knows is there (and often can't see something it doesn't expect to; google "invisible gorilla" for an example you can try). For a lot of folks, if a 1/72 plane model doesn't have visible panel lines, however faint, then it's just not complete - even though you can prove that they can't see the panel lines themselves at that scale. Conversely, I can place a mechanic figure outside a small, open maintenance hatch on an armored vehicle, and even though I don't add any structure inside the model, our mind's eye will "see" the items that it knows should be there, even though they're really not.
On my previous "eye" post, Oda commented that painting eyes [assumedly in any scale] is convention in the hobby. That observation reminded me that, in line with these thoughts, modeling of any subject is a combination of effects, including duplication, simulation, and implication. IMHO, the same often holds true for figures and busts.
I think.
In looking through this site, I found the "scaler". That drove me to the bathroom mirror with a ruler, to measure my visible eyeball top-to-bottom (height, not width/length). My supposedly-normal eye is 5/16" high, i.e. ~0.3125" (not to put too fine a point on it), from upper eyelid edge to lower eyelid edge.
SO - in the var scales, the area covered by the iris would be approximately:
1/72: 0.004"
1/48: 0.006"
1/35: 0.009"
1/32: 0.010"
1/24: 0.013"
Yes, those values are in thousands of an inch. For reference, a healthy human eye can discern a misalignment between two printed letters of as little a 0.010". That's a mighty small eyeball to paint! This reminds me of the aircraft modellers hashing over whether panel lines are really visible at scale; e.g., a 1/8" (0.125") gap in 1:1 is less than 0.002" in 1/72 scale, and ~0.0025" in 1/48 scale. Technically, you really wouldn't be able to see the line; you can, however, see tonal differences between adjoining panels, and since you know the line is there, you imagine you can see it.
The purist may ignore the actual lines and focus on distinguishing a panel edge from its neighbors.
On the other hand, the eye also expects to see what it knows is there (and often can't see something it doesn't expect to; google "invisible gorilla" for an example you can try). For a lot of folks, if a 1/72 plane model doesn't have visible panel lines, however faint, then it's just not complete - even though you can prove that they can't see the panel lines themselves at that scale. Conversely, I can place a mechanic figure outside a small, open maintenance hatch on an armored vehicle, and even though I don't add any structure inside the model, our mind's eye will "see" the items that it knows should be there, even though they're really not.
On my previous "eye" post, Oda commented that painting eyes [assumedly in any scale] is convention in the hobby. That observation reminded me that, in line with these thoughts, modeling of any subject is a combination of effects, including duplication, simulation, and implication. IMHO, the same often holds true for figures and busts.
I think.
