Beginner needing help to create an eye for animating it opening

i am quite new to blender, and it’s my first time really trying to do animations (at least beyond super basic stick figure stuff.) i wanted an eye that i would like to animate “opening up” and looking at the camera. i couldn’t really find any tips on how to do this, but i saw a few posts saying to model the eye in a closed state and then afterwards animate it ‘opening’ up, so i followed that advice and made my eye closed, as seen in the picture here.

however, since i would like to animate it opening up now, i realized i’ve come into some problems. firstly, the whole ‘closed eye’ is a single mesh, i’m not sure how i can “split” it in the middle of the eyelid to move them up/down respectively.

in shorts, what would anyone with experience do if they wanted to animate the image i linked to an opening eye? i don’t mind having to re-create the eye model in order to achieve this, and i suspect it’ll be necessary.

really hope someone can point me in the right direction for solving this animation!

EDIT: for example, how do you even move the verts of the eyelids from having made it in a single mesh? one of the issues i have is that this thing is basically just a deformed ‘ball,’ where i don’t really know how to start “opening it up.”

the “closed eye” was sculpted out of a sphere, so it’s also completely “filled in” meaning i probably need to carve out room inside of it (which i did using boolean modifier.)

but, i hope i managed to explain my problem accurately enough so you may point me in the right direction to solve this. i assume my method is entirely incorrect and you’re not supposed to make a closed eye fully from the same mesh, but i’m honestly not sure how i’m supposed to go about this. i assume i’ll have to make a new one from scratch, which is entirely fine.

A high poly sculpted mesh is not ideal for animation or shape keys. You need to do a retopology or start with a low poly mesh and model it in Edit mode.

To model an eye an eyeball is recommended. It helps you with the shape. Then model the lids. The edge loops that form the lids surround the eyeball in circles. If you have model it that way you pull down/up the lids by rotating them down/up from the sideview as shown in the video. Have a look here: