Yes! It's Yet Another Portal Gun!

From accurate perfection to Bondo messes, disproportionate official releases to garage masterpieces, the internet is in no short supply of Portal gun props.

At all.

However! The internet does not let you keep her contents, and if you want something, you either pony up the cash or get on with making yer own; which is of course, precisely why this, another ASHPD build thread has made an appearance.

Well, now that rather dramatic and hopefully stirring introduction has grabbed your attention, I'll get on with the stuff you may actually be interested in.

I started initial planning for the project back in winter last year, mainly by sketching out diagrams, cross-sections and blueprints in the middle of school lessons; which is of course a much more worthy use of time. From the outset I planned on making it by a combination of methods I'd seen across the internet and especially on here, The RPF.
As with most who set out to make an ASPHD, I studied Volpin's gun. And of course, compared with the original game model it's relatively inaccurate (I'm not discrediting his or anyone else's work in any way, just making observations!)
I then went on to look in-depth in ThrowingChicken's build, which in my very humble opinion seems to be possibly the most accurate ASHPD prop around; unfortunately my meagre paper round wages wouldn't stretch to a TC kit, so that was out of the question.
Once I'd looked and read up on the two most prominent builds I read just about every other guide I could find, played as much Portal as I could, and collected tons of reference material.
All that combined, I came up with a pretty definite design as to how this thing was going to be constructed.

To kick the build off, I went for the easy part of designing in Inkscape the prong sections and getting them lasercut from the rather excellent Ponoko.com



I then went to building the mid-barrel section; this was made from a 100mm section of pipe, with MDF oval rib structures and a copper pipe holding it all together (which will carry the wires for the LEDs later on in the build)



And the section was then glued all together to form a solid section



After a while, I got my act together and glued three blocks of insulation foam together, started getting the basic back-shell look carved out



...which ended up like this..



...which was then covered in a PVA/Polyfilla mix...



...which when sanded ended up like this...



...which when carved looked like this...



...which in turn didn't fit the barrel.
Damn.

So, that had to be started again from scratch
But anyway, instead I started the back barrel/chassis section; this was constructed from 3 MDF ribs, 1 MDF front plate and 1 acrylic backing plate, held together by 4 long threads, a lot of locknuts and some tubing. Oh and washers and wingnuts.



And all fits together like so





This time, we cut out the inside of the shell and then carved the outisde. Much more sensible.



Which once all put together started looking rather familiar





The shell was then soaked in a couple of coats of PVA/Polyfiller/water mix for strength as the resin we had was eating the foam





Anddd then I carved out the start of the front shell



I then gave the shell a thicker coat of PVA/Polyfilla/water mix.



If you're wondering why it's green, it's because I was bored and there was food colouring there.

WELL. Several month's work in the space of a few paragraphs there; I expect this is going to be one hell of a project, but it'll be worth it in the end (of course)

ANY suggestions, comments, advice or general interest is completely welcome

Wow, looks excellent so far, i love seeing portal related builds, wether it'd be potato-powered narcistic super-computers or portal-guns! Can't wait to see how it turns out, btw: Do you plan to make electronics, like lighting up in orange/blue and/or sound effects?

EDIT: Sorry, just saw something about the wires, i need to read threads before posting. Anywho, like the use of those heavy-duty converse to weight down the foam.

Coming along well! I recently received a NECA portal gun; while great for the price tag, if you really want what is in the game you're just going to have to do it yourself.

very cool man looking forward to see this finished

Keep the pics coming - looking great! I love seeing these build threads and all the unique ways of building similar replicas.

Huzzah! I managed to get some more time working on the ASHPD.



By this point I had smoothed out the front shell, thanks to Rodger's fancy new desk-mounted belt sander, which made it a helluva lot easier to shape, and shape smoothly at that.



...aaand a picture of Rodger applying some PVA/filler mix to the front shell



By this point between us we'd applied ample filler mix to each shell, and just left them out to dry on a bench. Thankfully, due to the front shell's considerably smoother surface I should have less work later on.



For the handle we just bent some copper tubing to shape, and soldered in some bolts; which in turn fit into the back plate with a pair of nuts, which in turn fit to the body with four wingnuts



And finally a complimentary picture of me with the gun. +stupid face

And now this is where we're at:



With things all over the place. I had some more detailed photos of before this, but the thread ain't getting much interest and I can't really be bothered to.

At any rate, using some 68mm pipe and a bit of plumbing parts Rodger had lying around, we started making the front barrel. I tell ya, of all the darned parts and funny shapes on this thing, I'm surprised to say that this is a difficult piece to make.



Then with some more filling and sanding, I got to a nice stage with the shells



They're still not even close to being done though.




Unfortunately, at this late stage, I'm having confusion about scale and size. In this picture, this will be the final length (minus claws), as the barrel does not extend over the shell. However, there seems to be quite a conflict over size in the Valve artwork and in-game shots:

Portal 2: In-game model

Portal 2: Released artwork

Portal: In-game model

I just need some advice or reassurance on scale, I'm confused and I'd be frustrated to have got it wrong, but I'd like to know either way

I went by the in game model, I personally felt that anything else defeated the purpose but that's just me.

There are two in game models, a low res model when the player is looking at the gun on the ground, and a higher res model for when the player is holding the gun. The high res model looks appealing when you view it from the angle your character is meant to view it, but when you look around you quickly discover it is incomplete to save on game resources and stretched out to force perspective. This conflicts with the low res model, but the low res model is missing details, so the best course of action, IMO, is to use the proportions of the low res model and apply the detail of the high res model. The best of both worlds.

ThrowingChicken said:

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I went by the in game model, I personally felt that anything else defeated the purpose but that's just me.

There are two in game models, a low res model when the player is looking at the gun on the ground, and a higher res model for when the player is holding the gun. The high res model looks appealing when you view it from the angle your character is meant to view it, but when you look around you quickly discover it is incomplete to save on game resources and stretched out to force perspective. This conflicts with the low res model, but the low res model is missing details, so the best course of action, IMO, is to use the proportions of the low res model and apply the detail of the high res model. The best of both worlds.

Wow, I never really thought about that! I agree with you, if you're going to make a replica from a game, use reference from the game.

But even so, I'm still confused about the scale of my own, I'm 5'7" but in the photo I'm slightly bending over; would you say it was to scale? I genuinely can't tell, and I'd never actually considered that I might have got the size wrong. I just scaled it assuming that Chell was around the 6' mark (she looks pretty tall in Portal 2, but maybe that's just the boots?)

Figuring out scale with game stuff can be tricky, since there are no real world components to compare it to (and even in the event they do render something you can actually buy, who's to say they didn't change the scale of it?). To get my scale I used the height of Alésia Glidewell (which, if I recall, was about average female height) and found a chart online that displayed female hand sizes based on height. I then scaled Chell's hand to 1:1 of the average hand size, along with the Portal gun. When I measured the diameter of the rails tube on my scaled image I found it to be 4" on the dot, which was pipe diameter I knew I could purchase off the shelf so I felt that I had hit the perfect scale. The rest of the numbers just fall into place after that.

How long is it right now? Excluding claws, mine is roughly 19-3/4" in length. The NECA gun is roughly 22" in length, which I feel can probably be attributed to them using a model made for the promo materials, which I suspect was was based on the stretched out high res player view model in the game, since they still got the rails tube at 4" diameter like I did.

ThrowingChicken said:

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Figuring out scale with game stuff can be tricky, since there are no real world components to compare it to (and even in the event they do render something you can actually buy, who's to say they didn't change the scale of it?). To get my scale I used the height of Alésia Glidewell (which, if I recall, was about average female height) and found a chart online that displayed female hand sizes based on height. I then scaled Chell's hand to 1:1 of the average hand size, along with the Portal gun. When I measured the diameter of the rails tube on my scaled image I found it to be 4" on the dot, which was pipe diameter I knew I could purchase off the shelf so I felt that I had hit the perfect scale. The rest of the numbers just fall into place after that.

How long is it right now? Excluding claws, mine is roughly 19-3/4" in length. The NECA gun is roughly 22" in length, which I feel can probably be attributed to them using a model made for the promo materials, which I suspect was was based on the stretched out high res player view model in the game, since they still got the rails tube at 4" diameter like I did.

Excluding claws, mine scales in at almost exactly 500mm, or 19.6"
So actually it should be the same length as yours pretty much, and a few inches shorter than the NECA one. I also used 4" piping for the mid-barrel, and 60mm clear acrylic pipe for the clear chamber section; unfortunately I had to slightly scale down the size of the front barrel from having a 75mm internal pipe to a 68mm, simply because I couldn't get hold of anything else; I doubt it will make too much of a difference though in the end...
Thanks for your help in getting that cleared

Looks great man, makes me realize I need to get off my butt and start one of my own!!!!

Whelp, I got a little bit more time working on this.
The shells still need a lot of work, but they're getting there; all the different types of fillers and primers are doing my head in



I managed to severely damage the front barrel ring due to my hopeless skills with the belt sander, however we managed to rescue it in the end



And then a moderate coat of primer for the back shell



Ah, the wonders of Bondo



Once the primer had set, I gave a coat of white primer, and once that had dried, I started sanding again



Well, after some primer and sanding the barrel has turned out preeeetty nicely!



Again, I'll update this when I can; but in the meantime any tips are needed!

Great job man! I always love seeing new ways to build these things

This fills my heart with joy and song. I love scratch builds. And this is beautiful. Keep at it, friend!!

Thought I ought to do a rough assembly to see how it'll look with the barrel on





Apologies for the terrible photo quality



Aaaah, everyone's favourite bit. Spot filling.

Oh and by the way, has anyone got any ideas on how to strengthen the shells so they'll be durable? At the moment they're very solid indeed (and still lightweight) but relatively brittle; I dropped the big one off my desk earlier and there's a crack/dent. Only small, but I'm worried about how well it'd hold up during a con around lots of people. I had an idea of vacuum forming it, but I'm unsure if the former we have at college will take the height of the larger shell.

OH and also this: http://www.therpf.com/f9/portal-gun-...1/#post2602881

(need some halps, thanks)

Carried on some more work on the shells, how on earth do all you guys manage to do this in 5 or so passes?! I must've done about 7 by now!
I went with blue spray paint this time because a) I can work through the layers a bit more easily and b) I ran out of proper primer



As you can probably see, there are far fewer spots to be filled and sanded this time



I just filled those with Liquid Green Stuff, brilliant stuff that is



Looks a little bit odd in blue, but in a cool way
I also managed to paint the barrel in black



And a first-person view. Actually, the game view is far more over to the left, but eh, you get the picture

Looking great! Keep up the good work, can't wait to see more!

Haystack Hair said:

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Oh and by the way, has anyone got any ideas on how to strengthen the shells so they'll be durable? At the moment they're very solid indeed (and still lightweight) but relatively brittle; I dropped the big one off my desk earlier and there's a crack/dent. Only small, but I'm worried about how well it'd hold up during a con around lots of people. I had an idea of vacuum forming it, but I'm unsure if the former we have at college will take the height of the larger shell.

Couple of layers of fiberglass maybe? (If so, might want to do that now, because you're going to have to spot-fill all over again :P)

As for sounds, this is the site who make the board that the Furin Wheatley uses (And they do a Portal gun pre-load)

Sound board for props and costumes model 1M

Nice build. I'm in the "plan-replan-rereplan-rerereplan" stage of building an interchangable personality sphere. Looking at how you're getting on with sculpting the curved surfaces for the gun is helping me decide the best way of doing my build. (I bought a NECA portal gun :P)

I remember doing the shells on mine were the biggest pain in the.... well , you know. I keep wanting to redo my shells to be more accurate. keep up the hard work man and good luck with the rest of your build !

Whew, this is getting along alright now. I've set a target deadline of April in time for May MCM Expo, but I can see it getting done before that though.

I cut out the fins by hand, and superglued them to the center barrel



I then got a bracket laser-cut and solvent-glued that to the barrel itself. I then used 4 M4 nuts and bolts to attach it securely to the main barrel plate:





Look at all that multicolour goodness!



So far, it's totalled in at:
-158 parts (including parts glued to other parts)
-52 nuts, bolts and screws
-Disassemble able into 50 parts

Tubes 'n claws now.
I've got this idea that I want the entire gun to disassemble into more packable pieces, so using Lego parts I've devised a way to make the tubes unplug from each shell



By using pen lids I started making the attachments for the tubes



Little bit messy in the photo, but it'll be cleaned up



And using large paperclips, I started the claw cages. Huzzah for stationery!