Half Life 2- Dog

For my next overambitious and extremely time-consuming project, I will be making Dog from Half Life 2.



I would love to build a full-scale Dog, but due to lack of space and practical reasons I will be scaling him to my size with my head located in the chest portion. I couldn’t find very many clear reference photos online but luckily I had access to HL2 on Steam. I took some screenshots and then I drew lines in Paint to count pixels for scaling.



I’ll be starting with his head. I like to use plastics that I can find at the dollar store or somewhere similar. The clear lens would ideally be made on my vacuum forming machine, but I haven’t quite finished it yet. I found some giant googly eyes at the craft store that were the right size. If anyone has a better idea for this I am open to suggestions because the googly eye plastic is easily dented (and it doesn’t pop back out).



I would like to make a working mechanical iris for the eye, but for now I am just using a circular piece of plastic from a plastic plate set that I had left over from the shy guy mask I made. I painted the bowl black and used some silicone to make the weld lines. I also tried some weathering this time by using charcoal black on the white plastic and a brownish (technical term) acrylic paint for the rust on the bowl. I’ll pick up some orange this week to add to the mix. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to apply.



I cut the fins of the head out of foam. I experimented with some foam over the weekend by making a Shovel Knight helmet for my son, and it was really fun! I am definitely going to be using more foam in my builds in the future. I definitely recommend Evil Ted’s YouTube videos for tips on using foam.



For the red eye in the center I painted one side of a clear plastic plate red, cut it out, and glued it to the center of the iris. It only needs to be partially transparent. I will be attaching a white LED or cheap flashlight behind this.

That’s it for now!

Awesome mate! hope you keep us updated on this one!

I have done some PVC sculpting which was a little tricky because my Dremel is out of commission. But a little file work never hurt anyone (aside from the blisters of course).
I worked on the neck while I think about how to attach the fins around his head.


After I thickened up the now angled cross-joint I used some foam near the end to save on weight. I added a bowl from the dollar store for the back of the head and painted it gray. I wired it up with a free Harbor Freight flashlight that I cut in pieces due to space reasons. I will store the battery and switch portions in the neck joint so I can turn it on and off without too much trouble.

cool idea

I finished the fins on the head! Mostly. There are three fins that go backward that I still need to cut out.

Using some cheap hair clips I was able to add hinges to the fins and allow for them to move up and down. I took them apart and reversed the springs so they would stay open. I plan to attach some wires that will move the fins and let Dog express some emotion.



I added different layers of acrylic paint to try to replicate Dog’s rusted look. This project is pretty nice because Dog is so weathered and beat up and that allows me to not always have the cleanest edges or perfectly painted surfaces. I’m trying not to go overboard with the weathering though.



Here's a screen shot for comparison. His fins are pulled back a little in this image and mine are fully extended.

That’s it for this week!

this game was hella fun, LOVE THIS ROBOT!! looking forward to progress pictures. :cool