Two years ago for Halloween I had a mask made for a costume which, while a lot of fun, made it hard to interact with people at Halloween parties. Last year I wanted something that wouldn't require me to wear anything special and I hit on the idea of a ventriloquist dummy.

I'm not any good at ventriloquism so I thought it would be easier to bring him to life than me learn how to throw my voice. Rather than re-invent the wheel I thought it'd be better to find a toy that already did what I wanted and use those mechanics to bring my dummy to life.

Here is what I did and how I did it. I didn't track the time but it took about 3 weeks of a few hours here and there and a lot of trial and error. In the end I didn't actually need to re-wire anything and the guts of the toy would have enabled even more actions if the dummy supported it.