That's a great question Buff.

Simple eyes can be hand drawn, scanned at printed on vinyl or photo paper. Mesh is simple, go to a fabric store and find some transparent black material.
Makers always use simple materials for eyes ( flat eyes , there are no exotic magical material. Try a transparent clear laminate over the photo paper to protect them.

It is up to the individual not to overthink the process.

LOL

When I go to the fabric store, I often find rolls of plastic mesh. Neat thing is that they are white. Really neat thing is that they can be colored with black magic marker.

Assuming that I actually want to see through the mask's eyes, and not a vision slit, I just glue a square inside my masks over each eye socket hole.This acts as the sciera. I can then either paste a cutout made of photo paper which already has the Iris printed on it, onto each mesh eye, or hand draw the iris myself. Either way I color the pupil black.

kigurumionline.org/gallery/index.php/ImageExtended/1740/

In this case I colored everything by hand.

Best thing is, you can then see through the entire eye hole, except for areas where the paper Iris covers the mesh. If you really want a shiny eye, and don't care if the mesh is not breathable, cut a piece of clear plastic from a report binder and place that over the mesh before gluing everything into the mask.

Of course, if you don't plan on seeing through the eyes, print the whole Iris /pupil on photo paper and glue it onto the mask eye socket.

That's how I do it sometimes. Other times I just paint the eye socket.

Miss Kiki

I use foam-paper and fabric create realistic or cartoony or semi eyes^^

Printed paper is pretty much the standard for kig eyes. You cut holes in the paper to see out of, like this:

I like using car window tint on plastic material with a printed vinyl sticker above, it's also very commonly used for fursuits in Japan. Munimuni does something similar but with big sunglasses.

what I did for bjds and what I'll probably do for my kig head is take polymer clay and make they eye shape out of that, and then use resin and paint for the iris/pupil. additionally, you could look up fursuit eyes. they use foam for the whites, and painted buckram for the rest, because it's see through

Revisiting this thread there's no mention of interchangeable eyes.
My solution just simply works

210310-small_.jpg

They even include privacy screening

Hey All, has anyone attempted a "follow me" eye?

Most makers can do follow-me eyes and a lot of chinese makers have it listed as "3D eyes" or "chasing eyes" in their product listing, but it's not very popular as anime faces are pretty flat and therefore the effect doesn't work as well as it does for fursuit heads, leading to the masks looking cross-eyed at many angles plus the pupils disappear when looking at the mask from the side. Anyways, here an example vid of follow-me eyes in kig, but for just changing expressions you might as well just go for magnetic eyes that you only need to slide around for photos.