The Dropping Heads (Cutout) - Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Traditional Animation Techniques - page 180

knees. Stretch your arms out away from your body, because they are cut out
separately in the cutting phase.
You can take several shots with different expressions on your face or even
a four-increment head turn of yourself standing in the same position. You
can add these additional head positions to the animation using the heads
as replacements if you want to add a little more dynamic range to your
animation exercise, but this is not necessary. Once you have your shot(s),
download them onto a computer so you can print them out on thin card stock
that you can use in your printer. You should size your images so they can be
printed out on an 8 1 ⁄ 2 × 11 inch piece of paper or card stock.
Take those color printouts of your self-portrait shot and place them on a
cutting surface, like a rubber cutting mat. Since you shot your image in front
of a blank background, it should be very easy to see and cut out your contour.
It is best to use an X-Acto knife to cut your image from the background. You
can use scissors but they need to be smaller and very sharp to get good clean
edges. The next step is to cut apart the image of yourself in several areas. You
want to separate the head from the shoulders. One way to make this cut is
to separate the head from the torso at the neckline where your neck goes into
the collar of your clothes. The arms should be separated at the shoulders and
need to be cut at the elbows and wrist. Wherever you want to have movement
is where you need to make the cut. Remember that, when you reassemble
the parts, there must be a slight overlap of the sections so your new cutout
portrait may be a little shorter than you are. If you print two copies of your
portrait, you can cut the torso out of one copy leaving the shoulder areas a
little longer. Then cut the arms from the second copy. This way you have a
little overlap, at least from the shoulder to the upper arm.
ExErcisE Fig 5.B The setup for cutting, including a mat, knife, scissors, and the final cutout of your body.
The next step is where you can have some fun. You are going to animate
your character, throwing off your head, and new heads appear. So, you need
to find some different heads that you can photograph yourself, cut out of a
magazine, or even find on the Internet and print out. The heads could come
from Hollywood stars, politicians, your friends, drawings that you create,
insects, or any variety of heads you choose. They can vary in scale as long as
they have a believable visual fit to your original body.