exploding head

This is some stock footage of an actual head exploding using explosives (the old fashioned way). Gives a good idea of how the fragments will react to the explosives, how big the particles will be, which direction they fly off in and at what pace.

What i'm thinking at the moment is to cut the head up in Photoshop, stretch and skew it and then animate this on the timeline in After effects. I took a photograph of the baby doll with no head so i can overlay the footage on that frame.

From the example above it appears the head splits into 3 different sections - front and two sides. The front section which contains most of the facial features drops to the ground, and the two sides fly off in their respected directions. The only other thing to consider is the smoke plumage, which i will be able to achieve in Maya using a particle emitter.