Life Sized Cardboard Cut OutsWe print your image (photo) on a 5mm thick corflute sheet up to 1100mm wide by 2300mm tall (that’s a little over 7 foot). We then apply a cardboard strut to the rear of the print which folds out and allows the print to be free-standing.
We then cut the print to shape – normally the outline of a person. In most cases, people simply email us a photo (preferably full length, feet included although at times we’ve been able to get around missing lower legs in an image by creating a ‘plinth’ that they are protruding out from), tell us how tall the person should be and we scale it to size and we add a cutting line around the person. If they have wild hair, we might smooth the cutting line out around the hair line but if they have a “carefully dis-disheveled” hair-do, we”ll follow the odd tufts of hair to portray that dis-disheveled look, but we need to be aware that the cutter can only follow contours up to a certain complexity – From a distance you’d never know – we spend a fair bit of time making the cutting line fit nice and tight and it always looks great but you certainly can’t expect single strands of hair to be cut out.
If your ‘model’ is holding something, like a guitar, or a speech bubble, as long as the entire image fits within the sheet size of 2300mm x 1100mm then it’s all good – but you do need to consider the strength of any bits that stick out – for example, if the person is holding a guitar, the neck of the guitar may be sticking out by itself, long and narrow – that will be quite weak and prone to bending or breaking.
Sometimes we’ll adapt the cutting line to keep the area between an arm and (for example) a guitar neck in tact, to add strength. And we usually keep the area between the legs in tact for stability, but we ‘white’ that area out as there’s bound to be some sort of background in your image that you won’t want seen – any background in other areas gets cut off so you won’t see that.
If you have your own very specific requirements about the cutting line and you’re a graphic designer, you can apply your own cutting line, but you’ll need to supply the image as a pdf and the cutting line as a separate spot colour named as “cutting line” and set to overprint.
If you want to leave it to our discretion, a jpeg is all we need – the higher the quality you send us the better it will print.
If you’re selecting images from google images, try looking for the largest file size you can. If you send me an image, I’ll check it for quality first and I’ll let you know if it’s not going to look great.
The cost for one life-size cut-out is $196 + gst. Each subsequent one when done within the same order is $146 + gst (i.e. the first is still $196 but each subsequent one is $146 + gst). If you’re doing more than 4 or 5, talk to us as we can work out some special pricing.
Timing wise it takes about 3 to 5 working days to produce. If you need us to freight it for you, we can work out the price to get it to you, depending where you are in New Zealand. Alternatively you can collect from us.