‘Become Anyone’ Mask: Put On Endless Faces With 3,000 LEDs

Imagine slipping on a mask that can project any face, or pattern, you want. Sean Hodgins didn’t just envision such a device. He created one.

Meet Become Anyone 2.0, the next-generation version of a face mask Hodgins, an Ontario-based mechanical engineer and maker, built five years ago. That full-face mask required a small projector — mounted to the end of a pole attached to the mask’s chin — that beams images onto the gizmo’s surface. With the updated version Hodgins debuted recently, he’s crafted a standalone, more portable unit.

“I don’t often do second versions of my projects, but this one was warranted because it had such a good response initially online,” Hodgins, who posts videos of his open-source DIY projects to his YouTube channel of 164,000 subscribers, said in an interview. “People thought it was really cool, and I wanted to make it more mobile and versatile.”

After considering ways to do that, Hodgins — who works as a contract engineer helping bring client ideas to life — had an idea: What if each panel on the mask was its own programmable LED matrix capable of displaying dynamic images? He ultimately used 2,960 red-green-blue addressable LEDs, which give users control over individual lights for endless creative possibilities. He mounted each LED matrix onto a custom-designed printed circuit board, then soldered together all 16 flat PCBs using tiny wires and tabs to form a 3D polygon with a distinctly sci-fi aesthetic.

A Rasberry Pi, the small computer long beloved by hobbyists, can refresh the display at 8 frames per second, and runs off a battery-powered controller Hodgins can tuck into his pocket. The wireless mask has a futuristic, cyberbunk vibe fit for a club pulsing with electronica. So far, Hodgins has turned it into everything from a character out of the original Doom video game to a wearable display for vividly colored psychedelic animations.

In the YouTube video below, the 36-year-old Hodgins explains how he made Become Anyone 2.0, which has been widely met with praise. “Both the production quality and build are insane here,” commented wildly popular YouTube creator Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer with more than 60 million followers.

Become Anyone 2.0 brings to mind other wild masks, like this anti-surveillance mask designed to foil security cameras, though Hodgins made his solely for entertainment purposes. He even wore Become Anyone 2.0 outside his electronics-filled workshop to an outdoor Halloween party. “It’s pretty fragile in this current state,” he said, but was happy to report it survived a full night in temperatures of about 32 degrees.

“My face stayed nice and warm the whole night,” he said.

Hodgins has shared the details of his build — including code and computer-aided design models — on collaborative developer platform GitHub so anyone can, well, Become Anyone. But given the advanced nature of the project, he doesn’t expect to see a floors of replicas just yet. “The project nearly doomed me,” he wrote on Instagram.

Still, as an engineer who loves nothing more than a good challenge, Hodgins is already looking ahead to Become Anyone 3.0. He’s considering bumping up the mask’s resolution by adding more LEDs and mounting the battery directly to the mask. One thing he probably won’t change? The futuristic vibe.

“You could just have a smooth LED mask,” he said, “but it adds a bit more character to make it jagged.”