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.