Portal 2 Personality Sphere Build

Thought i'd stick up a thread for my Portal 2 Personality Core build. I was inspired by this blog: Furin Cosplay, and also being pretty psyched at my Portal Gun arriving!

So here we go, haven't done too much today, it's been way too hot and i've spent most of it with a beer in my hand.

So here we go with the pictures.

So the thing is made out of a 2 part polystyrene sphere. In retrospect I would have rather it was made out of something more sturdy, like sculpters foam, but it'll be fine once i've got the wonderflex layer on it.



Unlike the Furin build, i've made the rear hole smaller than the front. The reason for this is that I don't need to get my hand inside it, as it's going to be a static prop, and I had very little reference for the back (working on that).

So because I'm using Polystyrene, I can't sculpt the top and bottom lower portions. To get around that i've just dropped the upper and lower portions of the sphere to make the step down, which seems to work quite well...



So thats the point i'm at right now, next up is to wonderflex the thing, which will be about a week, and then we'll move on



Stay tuned!

curious on this one, its not something built everyday

Nice Start. I'm thinking of building a Portal 2 Turret case mod so I'm taking in all of these creative ideas you guys have on this site.

dsnydad said:

Nice Start. I'm thinking of building a Portal 2 Turret case mod so I'm taking in all of these creative ideas you guys have on this site.

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a few days ago i was considering building a portal turret with extendable arms which house speakers instead of guns. The LED assembly for the eye would be the push button to open the arms

As this is the first time i've worked with Polystyrene as a base, can anyone recommend the best bonding solution for it? I've got the feeling that Superglue or 2 part epoxy will melt it, and PVA might not be strong enough. Any suggestions?

So while i'm waiting to be paid so I can buy Wonderflex, I decided to fire up the Source SDK Model Viewer, and get some better shots of the personality cores. I did this primarily because there's a severe lack of shots on the internet of the back or internals of the Cores, but I ended up pulling shots of all sides (It's not as accurate as a Pep file...but I don't want to start messing about with those yet..)





























So based on that, i've made some modifications to the polystyrene basic shape before I add the Wonderflex. I've cut a overlap into the outer shell (left and right side), and split the top and bottom sections.

This may end up being a trial run. This afternoon i've found 300 and 350mm PVC Hemispheres on a UK modelshop website, which would actually suit this build better, but I may be able to do the same with what i've already got, given that it'll cost me about £100 to buy the PVC domes, which I'd rather avoid if I can help it.

the build is cool and i am thinking about making one so the pictures will come in handy, thanks!!!

Consider me subbed. I've done my own builds in the past of the portal 1 cores, seen here . . .

GlaDOS Speakers - The Part Where He Kills You by Mart815 - YouTube

One of my customers built one of those and had me do the sound effects for it.
Check out her finished project.
Customer video of Wheatley from Portal 2 using Replicaprops sound module - YouTube

That is his inspiration for this project that he refere to, try to click on ''furin cosplay'' and you'll see.

Right. There's not been much activity on this in ages, because I've been buying and moving house.

I'm looking at starting this project up again, but taking a slightly different approach with it. Polystyrene and foam seems to be the easiest option when it comes to creating the raw model, but the problem is that the Personality Cores have a lot of hard edges, and are fundamentally a sphere with another 2/3 of a sphere on top of it (as the left and right outer shell bits). That's proving difficult to model, because the outer shell is quite thin and has some overlap, so i'm having to sculpt fine sections of the polystyrene...which isn't working so well.

So, I have the option of buying 4x 300mm PVC hemispheres and working with those, which would be easier to deal with, because they're already hollow, and are made out of a less brittle material.
My issue is that both the outer shell and the inner sphere would need thickening on the exposed edges to the depth of about 4mm. From what i've read, PVC hemispheres are only about .7mm thick, so that would be a fair amount of additional material.

So really I just need some advice. Should I buy the PVC hemispheres for the cleaner material, but risk having to deal with the thickness issue. If so, does anyone have any suggestions for an easy way to do this, or am i basically stuck with using copious amounts of bondo?

I am also slightly worried in my head that trying to make the outer shell out of a hemisphere of the same diameter as the inner sphere might cause problems. I can't figure out whether you'd be able to put one shell inside the other properly (geometry is failing my brain!) Any suggestions?

Thanks

Mate, I am also planning to build one. If you don't mind me asking, could you let me know where I can buy these PVC hemispheres? Cheers!

Littlemuseum said:

Mate, I am also planning to build one. If you don't mind me asking, could you let me know where I can buy these PVC hemispheres? Cheers!

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This project got put on the backburner due to various life events (he's still in a box in my office though!), but if I was going to buy them in the UK, i'd get them from PVC hemisphere

Mate, thank you for the much appreciated reply and I will check out the model shop website. Cheers!