Portal Gun + Potato GLaDOS

Ok  so the school year is almost over and for my art final which was a paper Mache project. I decided to make the Portal Gun from the game Portal /2. The internet and many of my friends are fascinated by the game so I thought... if people on the internet can do it.... Why cant I?  The picture above is from Volpin Props who did an amazing Portal gun build but was too expensive in the current economy and my lack of tools to follow. His website is:http://volpinprops.blogspot.com/2009/01/testing.html     The first thing i did was design and get an idea of how i wanted it to look in the end.

Once i got that done came the part of shaping everything. Since GLaDOS is pretty much a potato i decided to start there. For those who don't really want to read through all this, heres the finished GLaDOS Potato all paper mached, detailed, painted and glued together. The cable in the back is an ipod adapter which i connected to an internal speaker cause its not GLaDOS if she cant insult you.

The first thing i did was wad up a bunch of newspaper till i got a decent potato shape. After that i wrapped it pretty tight with tape to give it a sturdy shape. After that it was layer after layer till i got it thick enough so it wouldn't bend. Once that was done i began to form the eye for GLaDOS. The basic outer part was made of craft foam, detailed, and used as a master to follow to sculpt out of clay. The details were added before it could dry and solidify. .

The two cables powering GLaDOS were cut ahead of time from extra wire i had lying around. These were wrapped around a pair of regular nails and put into the paper potato. Once that was done i began to build one of the two main shells of the Portal Gun. This was done by placing a layer of paper over a one gallon can of paint to get the rounded feeling and just did it over and over and over to get the right thickness and round shape. Tape was put around the edges to pull it together to add the curve effect. 

 

Next came the first layer of paper mache for GLaDOS and the bigger shell. Once the first layer hardened i cut off the excess paper mache to smooth it out. Another layer was added and allowed to set. I only had 2 weeks on this final so its not gonna be perfect. The second layer was smoothed out with some sand paper and covered again  every wrinkle and crease was sanded down until my patience ran out  around 35min into class.

Once it was sanded down I took it home to add some details. I went to OSH and bought some sturdy waterproof cable, about 2 feet of it.... ended up being all i needed. The little holes for the cables to go into were created with plumber putty and hardened with clear glue.

With the other layers of paper mache, i kind of neglected taking pictures because of the rush to finish it. Once i got back to school i began to construct the 3 claws on the portal gun. The claws are about the same size as my arm so i used that as a reference and kinda winged it. In the end they came out better than i thought. To give the claws some sturdy support i put some wire under them and wrapped it with tape over and over till they wouldn't bend. I had to remember that i was going to end up putting GLaDOS on one of the claws like in the game.

Once that was done it was time to start the barrel part of the gun... to be honest i had no idea until my friend suggested to use the card board part of the used up rolls of tape. I collected as many as i could from the class because we went through alot of tape between everybody. the diameter of the tape was close to 4 1/2in which was exactly what i needed. i hot glued them together and test fitted it with the rest of the gun. 

All this i got done in a week... one week left... busy weekend ahead of me. On the last day of the week, i set the gun aside and started to piece GLaDOS together, added some paint for the eye and added minor details like cables and such. 

  My paper mache skills are kinda messy i know... ill work on it ill work on it. Once that was done i took the gun home at the end of the day... people staring  some saying GLaDOS, "Looks like a potato bomb" and what not. Once i got home i took a break to think of what i was going to do. 2 hours later i grabbed some paint and started to paint it.  


 




































  
After working almost all through my weekend, i was pretty happy with what i had. The claws were given a base coat of black, the shells were also coated and GLaDOS was given a light brown coat.

The center clear part of the gun was made with a card board cylinder and a clear cylinder which i hot glued together to give it some structure. The overall gun is really light but still needs some work. With only a day left i hope to finish up with the paint in class. GLaDOS was weathered with acrylic paints and lightly sanded down to give her that aged look. Once all that was done  at school i gave everything a  good coat of paint.

After that i hot glued everything together and painted any scratches it might have had. After that i put GLaDOS on the claw but it couldnt hold it up so i ended up hot gluing it to the side of the gun. i got an A on the project and everyone loved it. Overall its mainly paper mache with lots of wire and random objects. please critics are welcome