The vocabulary of the shop — drawn where a drawing beats a paragraph, then defined plainly.
The diagram board
CosNFX maps a costume into effect areas — head, chest, hands — each its own trigger with its own sound. Calibration teaches the zones your motion.
Battery → board → strip, with data as the thin wire between. Amps flow by the meter — the cheat sheet does the hours math.
The servo's horn pulls a push-rod; the rod lifts the eyelid. Angle in, expression out — every blink is a 90° story.
A bevel is a cut at an angle: two edges beveled in opposite directions glue flat into a smooth curve — the seam trick of the whole craft. Contact cement: coat both faces, wait tacky, join once.
Hours = mAh ÷ mA-draw: a 10,000 mAh bank feeding a ~1 A build is ~7 honest hours; point LEDs cost 20 mA each. Plan dimmed presets at 30–50% and double the number you got — full white is for photos, not the con plan.
From gesture to sound: the watch sensor lands under 50 ms — the app plays locally; a Bluetooth hop adds 150–300 ms, noticeable on sharp cues; phone-driven props run 100–400 ms — glow and ambience, not hits.
The first mold is one open box: mount the master in a cardboard-and-hot-glue shell, detail side up — the pour side wants the smoothest face. Sloped walls and open shapes release cleanly; deep undercuts fight the demold. The ratio lives on the product (the app's catalog carries the exact pairs) — cure 4–24 h at room temp.
The cap meets skin at the lace: cut it in zigzags along the wig's pre-made hairline — never a straight line — tint the underside only, press onto glue cured until tacky, then melt the edge warm, not hot. Style with heat: boil-set ~80 °C, or 150–180 °C on heat-resistant fiber — strand-test first.
A strip whose every pixel takes orders — one data wire, endless patterns.
Slicing EVA at an angle so glued seams close into a smooth curve.
The foam glue: coat both sides, dry, then join — it bonds on contact.
See the site's rug cousins — here, a sheared prop pile that reads as fabric.
Ignoring a sensor's double-fires so one gesture = one cue.
Anything translucent between LED and eye — the 10 mm rule turns points into glow.
Heat-formable closed-cell foam; thickness in mm is the build's vocabulary.
Where an effect should land: the strike point of the movement, not its start.
The app's editable trigger areas — seven by default, calibrated to you.
Warming EVA so it keeps a new shape — gloves + ventilation always.
The milliseconds between gesture and sound; watch-speaker ≈ instant, Bluetooth +150–300 ms.
The rubbery primer coat that makes foam paintable and sealable.
The app's one-time upgrade: custom content, timelines, prop control, no attribution line.
A servo's instruction: 1–2 ms pulses choose the angle; sent 50× a second.
The linkage translating servo angle into eyelid/brow motion.
The sealing layer before paint — Plasti Dip, gesso, or mod-podge, in order of budget.
A gearmotor that holds an angle instead of spinning — animatronics in a box.
Bench-checking a mech's full motion before it meets glue or skin.
The paint arts that age props: washes in recesses, dry-brush on edges, chips at stress.
Build TV's sections — one craft, one shelf of video.