ZX Spectrum Horace Goes Skiing

Posted: Feb 01, 2015

By: Dan Birch

Back in the '80s Horace was quite a star. So here today, we will be recreating the retro gaming favourite in colourful plastic and placed on a trophy stand.

As with all the retro gaming objects printed out, we start with the original bitmap of our friend Horace, from the game Horace Goes Skiing in all his glorious ZX Spectrum colours.

We are only interested in Horace himself, so I have cropped him out of the picture and filled in his skis. We will be using the 2D to 3D image convertor to create the main character model from our bitmap.

To help the tool generate the model, we have turned the bitmap image into a grey-scale and have adjusted the colour of the component pieces (Skis, Body and Eyes). The tool will basically vary the height in the created model depending on the brightness of the colours in the bitmap.

Once we have created the model from the bitmap, we next turn to creating a trophy stand and plaque for Horace to sit on. The stand and plaque will be designed up in 123D Design and will have a slot on top for the bottom of Horace's ski to sit in.

Horace Goes Skiing Design Trophy

Here we have the stand, plaque and 2 small posts that allow the plaque to be clipped onto the front of the stand. We'll be printing the stand out in Gold plastic and the plaque in Silver with White writing on.

Printing out all the pieces is a relatively straight forward process. The stand is all Gold so can be left to print by itself. The Plaque we need to change the colour of the plastic over when the printer gets to the text part.

Horace himself requires 2 colour changes. Starting with White plastic for the skis, we then switch to Blue for his body and then to light Blue for his distinct eyes.

Horace Goes Skiing Trophy Parts Printed