A sports network has borrowed a digital fabrication trick from the toy design world.

Nowadays you can order popular action figures with your own 3D-printed head on it, courtesy of a collaboration between Hasbro and Formlabs. The Fox Sports network, who will be broadcasting the upcoming Women's World Cup, took notice; facial scanning and 3D printing mean you no longer have to hire a talented sculptor to reproduce someone's likeness, nor wait months or years for them to complete it. Thus the network commissioned a partially digitally-fabricated statue of Alex Morgan, the USWNT's star forward, to promote the tournament.

Concept art. Image: Fox Sports

Rather than sitting for long sessions with a sculptor, Morgan participated in a photo shoot wearing the U.S. flag and hoisting the WWC trophy. (Morgan and the USWNT won the last two events, in 2019 and 2015.) A team of artists and digital fabricators then created a 20-foot statue, made primarily of reinforced foam and painted with a hardcoat, and featuring a 3D-printed likeness of Morgan's head using data captured at the photo shoot. The trophy was also 3D-printed.

Image: Fox Sports

Fox Sports is sending the statue, crowned "Liberty Alex," on a U.S. tour to promote their WWC coverage. The statue will then come to rest at Fox Square in New York City prior to the July 20th start of the tournament, which takes place in Australia and New Zealand.

Image: Fox Sports

Given that photo shoots are typically easier than sitting for sculpting sessions, you can bet we'll be seeing more statues of famous figures with 3D-printed heads in the future.