Can those who have repainted theirs themselves let me know what paint and color you used for the eyes? Thank you.
I used Games Workshop colors, with a 5/0 brush for the irises. For the pupils, I used the end of a toothpick dipped in black paint (due to its circular size), which I then applied bit by bit until I had the pupil size I wanted. That was some nerve wrecking work.
While the yellow irises look, well, yellow, it's actually a yellowish orange from what I could tell (using movie and promotional shots). The contrast with the dark red outer rims and large black pupils makes it pop and appear more yellow than it actually is. So I mixed some yellow and red to get the desired color.
Beyond the irises, there a couple of other things that are important to really match his on-screen appearance though:
- In all of the screenshots I checked, I noticed that the irises always touch the bottom eye lid. There is never any white visible below it, even when he is looking up. So I'd recommend to expand the overall size of the irises.
- His pupils are quite large/dilated, much larger than HT painted them. And of course, his right eye is off-center/lazy in most screenshots. I don't know whether this was intentional or if the contact simply slipped, but it helps in selling that on-screen creepiness IMO.
- Finally, HT was quite generous in their application of the red below the eyes, and went with a rather dark and muted red. In the movie, this red area was not as large, but brighter, so I did that as well. This does require to paint over the red with a matching pale skin color, which was some trial and error for me until I got the right tone.
If you want to go all out, beyond the eyes, I would also recommend to add some more color to the cheek bones, the inside of this frown, the chin, the lips, and yellowing the teeth. This all adds more contrast and depth to his face, which was lacking in the HT IMO. Finally, I did some light drybrushing of some of the raised white parts to lighten them some more, adding even more variation. Most of this is rather subtle, but it made a world of difference to me, and changed my opinion of the sculpt from good to fantastic.
Here are some close up shots of mine if that helps, plus my original comparison shot. I didn't repaint the sclera/white part of the eyes, that's the original paint job. I wouldn't be able to replicate those tiny little veins.
