Hi all, I stumbled across this  VERY good idea for eye mechanisms, on youtube. It takes the up-down movement of a lever and transfers it to sideways movement via a diagonal slot in the eyeball. Tools to do it are a little high tech, but the  process should be able to be done with bush carpentry ingenuity. eg: I'd replace a hinge  that only hobby shops in the states are likely to have (well, I've never seen them here in this country) , with a bit of cloth or leather, and hand tools should be able to  achieve the same results.

..and another  very  good one... (Stan Winston school actually gave a full length freebie vid this time)

...and a short 3 min  'teaser' for their course... but, if you are smart and observe well, you might be able to replicate this mech 

Nice idea for the eyes in the first video. Stan Winston videos are great but technical, I would like to see solutions with every day materials. Great videos for the collection

Yes indeed DrPopet, I too like the 'everyday materials' approach. Very few people in the real world have all the gizmos. But, there are concepts in these which I liked. I also don't use mechanisms much, because in the real world, we don't have enough puppeteers to control all the mechanisms. So we go with what is simple. Same with puppet design. We could do, and have done, some realistic sort of stuff, but it becomes very project specific, and I always go back to the basic and simple designs.  But yes, cool videos, and respect to those who did them.

I sell Eye Blinking and Eyebrow Mechs with the patterns and instructions on how to put them in on my site PuppetPrints.com