Looking at

Elproducts' remix

of

4frika's Babbo Natale

I realized that neither was exactly what I wanted. So I started from scratch with a fresh sketch of a cartoon Santa, designed in Adobe Illustrator and extruded in Tinkercad. That resulted in

Christmas Countdown Cubes v1

I was dissatisfied with the amount of gluing-up required by this design, so I went back to the drawing board. While it looks very similar to the original, this new design sports a variety of improvements.

• Doubled the thickness of the backplate
• Change the backplate color to white, and unified all white elements into a single piece.
• Removed the requirement for a connecting rod by modifying the backplate to accommodate friction fit of Santa's head.
• Reduced the overall height of Santa's eyes, so he doesn't look quite so bug-eyed. Eyes now fit flush with the face plate.
• Filleted the cube edges for a smoother appearance.
• Changed all type and numerals to the free font called Grinched (https://www.dafont.com/grinched.font)
• Entire piece can now be assembled friction-fit, although I still glued the red on Santa's hat in case it ever gets knocked over.

Begin by printing base.stl (I did this in red). Next, print head.stl and face.stl in white. Head.stl will include the beard, mustache, hatband, tassel, and backplane as a single element. If you want Santa to have a different colored face, paint it before pressing it into place between the hatband and mustache (I used a sand-colored acrylic). Print eyes.stl in black, and press them into place on the face. Print nose.stl and hat.stl in red, and press them into place (I used a dab of CA glue to hold the hat piece securely).

Next, print cube_one and cube_two. If you want to insert the digits in a different color, print numerals.stl. I printed my cubes in a translucent red, and the numerals in a bronze gold.

For all inset elements (eyes, nose, and numerals), I advise trimming/filing/sanding a small chamfer onto the backside edges so they're easier to present to place. Fair warning: The numerals on the cubes can be a bit of a bear to get into place, but the result is outstanding.