One of my very first props I ever spent enough time to call "accurate" was my wife's Portal Gun, from Valve's 2007 release "Portal"
I've recently had the chance to revisit this project, as some of you guys may have seen when I was asking for moldmaking advice with the main center barrel a few weeks ago.
I figured I'd start a thread to show you some of the progress and keep tabs on the rest of the work going forward. The main differences between this piece and V1 is that V2 will have sound, brighter lights, a more accurate barrel, and is built entirely from cast parts. Its also about 4lbs heavier.
I started out by molding various parts from V1. These were decent molds that didn't require too much cleanup.
After trying, and failing, to mold the entire barrel section of V1, I remade the individual pieces of the barrel and molded those instead. The end portion is MDF turned on a lathe, the central and rear parts are PVC.
Since I have a lathe now, I modded the center light button on the casing to be a bit smoother and more uniform. Back when I built V1, all I had was a hand sander and a dremel tool.
The center barrel was tricky... Thanks to the people here I was able to make a workable mold of it and pull some pretty good copies. Takes a lot of resin, but its much faster than making each one by hand.
After a lot of time with spot filler, sanding, more filler, and more sanding, I had this:
Lastly, I grabbed some styrene and made up the parts for the "claws"
I don't want to make this too long-winded, so I'll pause for a breath here and continue with the electronics side of things later on today.
Hope you guys enjoy the build! This piece is going to be auctioned off for charity at the Child's Play annual fundraiser dinner in December. Really looking forward to this event.
I've recently had the chance to revisit this project, as some of you guys may have seen when I was asking for moldmaking advice with the main center barrel a few weeks ago.
I figured I'd start a thread to show you some of the progress and keep tabs on the rest of the work going forward. The main differences between this piece and V1 is that V2 will have sound, brighter lights, a more accurate barrel, and is built entirely from cast parts. Its also about 4lbs heavier.
I started out by molding various parts from V1. These were decent molds that didn't require too much cleanup.
After trying, and failing, to mold the entire barrel section of V1, I remade the individual pieces of the barrel and molded those instead. The end portion is MDF turned on a lathe, the central and rear parts are PVC.
Since I have a lathe now, I modded the center light button on the casing to be a bit smoother and more uniform. Back when I built V1, all I had was a hand sander and a dremel tool.
The center barrel was tricky... Thanks to the people here I was able to make a workable mold of it and pull some pretty good copies. Takes a lot of resin, but its much faster than making each one by hand.
After a lot of time with spot filler, sanding, more filler, and more sanding, I had this:
Lastly, I grabbed some styrene and made up the parts for the "claws"
I don't want to make this too long-winded, so I'll pause for a breath here and continue with the electronics side of things later on today.
Hope you guys enjoy the build! This piece is going to be auctioned off for charity at the Child's Play annual fundraiser dinner in December. Really looking forward to this event.
