Okay so the overall plan here is to vacu-form a fox mask out of translucent plastic, then glue a bunch of addressable LEDs to the inside of the mask and drive 'em with a microcontroller.

First step is probably making sure the vac forming works out? Need to pick a plastic. Want something thermoformable, translucent, a little bit flexible, and able to be glued to with silicone or hot glue.

Maybe polystyrene?

This totally means I'm planning to hand-solder several dozen 5mm SMT LEDs, while they're glued in place to a plastic that melts.

I'm hoping this is ambition and not just foolishness :)

I should probably spin up a Replica Prop Forum account to ask a lot of these questions :)

Then again, I don't actually know if original builds fall under that site's purview...

Today @rowanyote and I got a vacu-form box about half finished. Gonna use a cannibalized IR space heater which should warm the plastic really evenly.

Huh, this might be the first time I've built my own tool.

Neat :)

Blehh, trying to find a place to durably post about this project and ask for build advice.

The Replica Prop Forum clearly has the institutional knowledge I need but really does look purely for reproductions of existing media, not original builds. I've looked at two generalist cosplay forums and every post on the front page has half the posts with zero replies and the other half with less than ten. That doesn't seem promising.

I just wanna figure out what kind of plastic to use...

Knowing there's people who would be happy to help, but that it's inaccessible because I'm making my own art and not copying something extrant... yeah that's actually incredibly frustrating to me.

I'm probably overthinking it. That's a thing I'm prone to. Most of these plastics are probably fine.

"144 LED / meter strip"

Oh... oh my.

Oh Yes.

Hrmph. On reconsideration, I'll probably use the 60 LED/m strip due to power limitations.

On the plus side, it's a lot cheaper.

@starkatt you are a h*cking goddess. :D

@mawr don't praise me until I actually do the thing :)

@starkatt Also poke Rowan? She had a half-finished vacform box at one point, and if nothing else you might be able to salvage and fix it.

@emanate that's the plan :)

@starkatt @rowanyote ooo.

@starkatt *fans self*

@starkatt I remember watching a YouTuber DIYer doing vacuum forming, and I think he said ABS worked best for him? https://youtu.be/9ynFpxokWlM (Good luck with the project!)

@packbat I don't think ABS comes in clear or translucent.

@starkatt @rowanyote Excellent!

@starkatt do you know Phil Burgess, they’re howtopaintyourdragon over on birdsite? I’m pretty sure they’ve vacuum formed parts before.

@Leucrotta haaah, I was just reading his documentation on Adafruit for the LEDs I wanna use :D

@starkatt he’s an amazing guy. You know how most of us have 20 ideas and maybe at best we do five and they’re probably kinda wonky? Phil will have only five ideas and he’ll execute all five, and they’ll be nigh flawless.