Spore fans: We know you must be attached to your Spore avatar--after all, you've raised it from a single cell. You can now have a physical model of your beloved Spore character.

Maxis, an Electronic Arts studio, and Z Corporation announced today that Spore fans can transform their one-of-a-kind character to the real world with Spore Sculptures, a platform enabling fans to go beyond the game and do even more with their creativity.

"At its heart, Spore is a tool for creativity. Since launch, fans have made more than 40 million Spore creatures, vehicles and buildings," said Patrick Buechner, Vice President of Marketing at Maxis. "We wanted to give players a way to extend their in-game creativity to the real world. The flexibility of the in-game creation tools allows an almost limitless variety of Spore Sculptures."

Using Z Corporations' ZPrints, a high-definition multicolor 3D printing technology, a player's unique creature can be recreated into a full-color physical object. Creating a Spore sculpture is easy.

First, design your creature using the Spore Creature Creator within the game. You can choose from hundreds of flexible drag-and-drop body parts, giving you an endless amount of possible configurations. You can then digitally paint your creature with unique patterns, and once complete, you simply upload the digital creation to the Spore Sculptor Web site, and place your order.

There are a few restrictions in the creating the physical figure. Check out the Web site to learn which attributes are model-able, and which aren't. For example, creatures with two (or more) legs are OK, but creatures that are very big and heavy on the top and have a small bottom (see above), are not. Another example is that thin and feather-like features (above) are a no-no, but any color or size will work out.

Getting into the more technical aspect of creating the model, the 3D printers use a powder-binder technology to create parts directly from digital data. The 3D printer first spreads a think layer of powder. Then, an ink-jet print head prints a binder in the cross-section of the part being created, mixing color as it does. After the printing, the model is cleaned off and given a quick resin bath. And ta-da, you have your very own Spore figure, for about $49.50.