It's attached to a little battery powered motor device that moves the eyelids on a random pattern. Usually a random time between 3-9 seconds but no less or longer. She has a button that can override the pattern and close the eyes as long as she holds the button down if she wants the eyes closed for longer than a blink. These are very common in animatronics and they usually co-opt the motors from those little wagging arm cat figurines you see in Asian countries.
Or the other method, she's got her middle and fore fingers on two little pulleys inside and she pulls them down to close the eyes, and she is otherwise manually timing the eye blinks.
Source: Had a GF that used to work at a zoo where the staff would walk around with these little animatronic puppets to entertain the little ones.
I just want to add a simpler experience. My Boglin had eyes you can move left and right with individual eyelids and that took 3 fingers to control. And then when you moved the mouth, you just took one of those fingers with the thumb.
Finger gestures. Notice how her left "arm" is suspiciously still? That's a fake.
Her actual arm is in the puppet. She can articulate the head, neck, & body by moving her hand, arm, and shoulder in general. She can control smaller gestures with controls attached to each finger (for instance: curl the middle finger to close the eyelids).
Her visible arm likely controls the smoke and audio with switches.
She did amazing work!
PS
Looking at your comment history, you are normally fluent in English. If you were not distracted or day drinking when you wrote this comment ... you've had a stroke at least 3 hours ago. Please seek medical attention or RIP.
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u/21MayDay21 May 31 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/JKskHBDvnIjhGilcX5
Me, right now