I have long been a fan of the arcade game Q*Bert.

Heck, I even created a kind of clone of it in BASIC for my Commodore 64, called “BOXXY” which even had a level editor.

I also found out Funko made a deformed version which I saw on shelves but was not happy with. Their tendency to square off round heads would just not work with Q*Bert.

But then I saw they also made an Arcade series which were far more accurate, and before I actually found one, I had already made mine. But here’s theirs for comparison:

So in August I took it upon myself to create a 3D printed Q*Bert figure. It would not be difficult. A simple sphere with a piece of macaroni coming from it, with two spindly legs and nubby feet.

And the finished prototype with eyes:

So how do you go about making a 3D model of a pixel figure you only really ever get to see like this:

Easier than I thought. It seems there are many renditions of what Q*Bert may look like, including the one at the top of this article (seen on the side of the cabinet) and then there’s this one:

So I opted to do something resembling this, and my result was quite satisfactory.

Alas, 3D printing is great, but not perfect. Here, you see the weak spot. Since I wanted the face to print best, I printed it nose-up, meaning the rounded back had to sit on rafting, which so far, never prints very smoothly:

Nonetheless, I love the little guy.

I wanted a display base, and of course the thing that sprang to mind is the teleport pad in-game.

I made several since several friends wanted one.

Then last night, since I had just finished some other PEZ dispensers (another article) I decided to take this model, scale it down a bit and make a PEZ Dispenser head of Q*Bert.