Halloween Costume With Skeleton Mask, Mechanical Hands, Sound Reactive LED Eye Balls, and Dropping Head Trick

Hey, thank you for paying attention to my article, this is my very first costume at Halloween parade in Taiwan, First of all, I am grateful that I got so many inspiration from instructables, and finally I came up with this skeleton costume with following feactures: 
1) Jaw-movable 3D skeleton paper mask 
2) Gigantic mechanical hands made by laser cut wood
3) Sound reactive LED eye balls, blink when I speak
4) Head drop trick
If you are interested in any of this features, I am glad that I can give you a guide that may also apply to your own projects! I complete the majority of the costume at fablab Taipei, it is glad that they offering free usage for their equipment like laser cutter, and also, most important of all, the community brains power to help me finishing this project.

Update: 2013/11/02
Ellice helps me editing a video shows you how the whole costume works, please enjoy it!

Step 1: Jaw-movable Skeleton Mask

Nowadays, by the mercy of Pepakura, a software that turn 3D low-poly model into 2D plane, to made a 3D model based on paper is no longer a difficult task. However, it is still not too easy to assemble the pieces altogether. ScannerJoe made this awesome model of angry skull, I download the file, rearrange the size of skull based on my head size, cut it with laser cutter, and paste all the piece by tape in a dirty way. Finally, paint all the skeleton to gold. To make a movable jaw, I need two springs to fix the skeleton jaw under mine, and because paper itself doesn't have enough mechanical strength to do that, wood is not flexible enough to shape, I using leather instead. it turns out the effect is really satisfying.

Step 2: Gigantic Mechanical Hands

Materials:
4 mm wood rod
6  mm thing 600 x 400 mm Chipboard
Spring
string

Ted Hung and I design the mechanical hands is designed by Inkscape and Ai. The basic concept is to take the most from laser cutter. The file is attach on the following and feel free to use and modify it. Cut 6 mm Chipboard by laser cutter, using 4 mm rod to connect each joint, Cut the spring into pieces and hook it to each joint to provide forces to hold the joints.

Step 3: Sound Reactive LED Display

One of my body, Cloud, made this sound reactive LED for me. the electronic setup is so neat that he only uses op amp LM324, microphone, 100k potentiometer and several resistors. I using 3D printer to print the eye balls that cover the LED.

Step 4: Head Drop Trick

Finally, the head drop trick, the killer for my costume, it is simple to prepare, however, the effect is magnificent. For this, I shaped the 6 cm aluminum bar into my shape of shoulder, to be the support for jacket, so that when you bow down and lift you hands at the same time, it looks like the head is dropping from appearance.

Step 5: Ghost Rider Gen3

I run a parade and a fablab costume competition by this costume, it turns out win me a prize ;D. Here I want to re emphasize that the costume itself is made by a collective force, and I am proud that I am the one to present them. On the day for parade, so many people ask me for taking photo, Honestly, it is the first time I feel like I am a superstar or what during my life time ( with face masked, ironically...) and yeah, after more than 70 times head drop tricks, I need times to recover my neck.

Again, thank you so much to read through my first instructables, I hope it would give you some inspiration for your own projects.
Cheers.