Get your World of Warcraft avatar, fresh off the printer.

While few would call the activity productive, tens of millions of people have spent billions of hours inventing characters and playing in elaborate virtual worlds created for games such as Minecraft and World of Warcraft.

Kirkland-based FigurePrints has found one small way to make the virtual world real. Ed Fries, an avid player of World of Warcraft, became so attached to the avatar he created that he wanted a version he could hold in his hand. I wanted my custom character, he says, and he figured others did, too. In December 2007, he launched a business that uses 3D printers to create physical representations of the digital characters and cityscapes found in virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft.

People who play WoW are unique and passionate about their characters, Fries says. FigurePrints takes orders through its website (figureprints.com), where users upload the characters they have created online to FigurePrints servers. Customized computer graphic software refines the 3D images to make them smoother, cheaper to print and more durable. If the images arent practical to print, they may occasionally be rejected, but in most cases they are sent to one of the companys six 3D printers in Vancouver, B.C., to be recreated in physical form, a little like, Star Trek characacter emerging from a transporter.

The printers use fine white powder the consistency of flour to produce statues of the characters. Ink infused with a binder hits the powder into the desired pattern and color for the print to harden the powder.The ink does this for every 250th of an inch through each layer of the model, taking about 12 hours per block of powder. Each block holds six to 10 figurines. Once the print is complete, a technician uses an airbrush tool to blow away excess powder, revealing complete, multicolored figurines. The figures are immersed in a bath of glue to harden and then secured to a wooden base with a glass cover. The whole process takes about a week. Statues cost $129.95; busts go for $69.95. Shipping is extra.