Found My Marbles!

An old special effect gag is to make eyes concave with the pupil on the back. This makes eyes follow the viewer in person or on film. The tiny clear glass marble above is stationary on the surface. Only the camera angles shifted north, east, south, and west. You may notice how it looks as though the black dot pupil seems to move in each direction. (top row, second from right below, shows how an aqua paper circle was glued to the back of the marble. A hole was pierced, and black velvet dot was glued over the hole).
 

This was cool, but I found it easier to hollow out a ball of white airdry clay, punching out a deep black velvet paper pupil (edges have to be sharp like a real aperture), and doming over with a thick clear acrylic and let dry.

For the smaller stop-motion size reproduction of the larger mermaid puppet, I printed out the photo of the sculpt to size, cut out the eye openings in it, and use that as a mask for precise sizing of the smaller eyes.

Had to match the pale aqua color for the iris. I had micro caviar black glass beads, smaller than poppy seeds, that I forced into a pierced hole in the small white clay shapes. This meant the circumference of the beads made the pupils very black and perfectly rounded. Both essential qualities for pupils at any size.

PS: the gold leaf irises also looked good on Kyra, but the pretty aqua hit more cohesively in the end. Note that any color put on top of a metallic is lifted and luminous. It's a neat trick to keep in mind for the right puppet.