A hackergotchi is a picture of a person's head that's used as an avatar for identification on a blog. Any region below the neck is cut out, as are any portions of the picture that don't include the head. You can create a hackergotchi easily with a digital camera and the GIMP.

Since you're focusing only on the head, you don't need a very high-quality image to work with. The picture I used was taken with a 1.3-megapixel camera phone. Besides, a hackergotchi is typically 80x80 or at most 100x100 pixels, so many fine details and even defects like red-eye won't be noticeable.

You only need to use two of the GIMP's arsenal of tools to create your hackergotchi: the Create and Edit Paths tool (Tools -> Paths) and the Eraser (Tools -> Paint Tools -> Eraser).

To begin, open your favorite image with GIMP.

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Also sorta related: Our next teachers: avatar experts