i linked the lite brite source, i initially started with that, its pretty dim but i made a duplicate of the layer, and i think set it to vivid light, it looked really good, but i felt i needed to put a little more effort into it, so i replaced all of the colors to make it red, and made a few layers to fill the background, then took a very blocky font and did the type rasterized it and then set it to vivid light in order to give it a more light up look.
Seeing the carrots today im kind of disgusted with them, the hat has some work around the edges, the chain as well. overall the entire image came together last night to keep this from stalling as my initial idea comepletly tanked.
Silver, I see what you're trying to do with that background there, but you can see the cuts in the LED lights where the text ends.
To get that light effect to truly work I suggest that you make another copy of your lightboard mask, but make the circles of what can be seen through extremely small, mask the text by this 'board' of tiny pinhole circles, stroke the transparency of that mask, mask that by by original lightboard pattern, then filter the s*** out of it.
I've provided an example. Ask me questions if you need to and I'll get back to them later
*attempting to link to previously attached image*
"Good lord, you're wasting thousands of dollars worth of Interferon!"
"... and you're Interferon with our good time!"
While i agree seeing the parts of the text that chopped off parts of the circle could have been a bit better, i think your end result text is far to unclean. I had initially started to do it that way, however every time i did the letters end up looking warped or not like the letters i had initially wanted. I opted to go for a more clear type, then high detial of the lights that created it. In the future i will certainly look into making it a little more detailed and try to find a nice balance in between.