I want to create a mannequin mod that displays whatever armor a player wishes to put on the mannequin, and I think making it act as a static player/character with armor works. The sprite for the wooden mannequin is already in the game files when you preview armor, and I'm able to make it an item but I'm not sure how I can code it so that it can "wear" the armors.
That would probably require to change some of the source code, which as far as I know is not available right now.
I think developer's will do that feature in future...like in Terraria...there was be some mannequin's. You just will be wait for this...now they work only for code and balance.