Unfinished prop: Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device

Materials: LD45 Foam
                 Homemade Paperclay
                 Hot Glue
                 Polyfiller ( Joint Compoud )

Time taken: Two days ( so far )

Safe to say, that this is going to be the most ambitious project of mine yet. The complicated nature of the gun itself, coupled with the mixed material approach I'm using are doubtlessly going to result in hilarity ( read: my tears of frustration ) at some stage as I'm yet to really combine any radically different materials. I'm actually making this gun for a friend of mine with a deadline of the 28th October, so the pressure's really on.

The first part of this I've decided to work on is the front most 'shell' of the gun, where the user's hand rests underneath the end of the barrel. The gun's shells are where I forsee all the major complications for this project arising as they're quite complicated 3D curves and are going to need to be 'solid' to match the in game gun's metal / fibreglass effect.

So, to work! In the interests of saving time and money I've forgone the whole sculpt, vacuform, cut method ( Which, personally, I would love to be doing, in a perfect world ) and instead I'm going to mash up some pepakura with some paperclay. The first step was to get ahold of a .pdo file of the portal gun which was kindly supplied by a user over at the Replica Prop Forum.

 

For those not in the know, Pepakura is a piece of software that takes 3D models and 'unfolds' them into parts that can be printed off, cut out and reassembled. It's the software of choice for most people into their papercraft and the concept can be conviniently be transferred over to prop making by cutting the pieces out in foam rather than paper. Due to the ( relatively ) simple nature of the gun's barrel, I've opted to just use Pepakura for the shells.

 So after printing off the pieces, I cut them out, ignoring the fastening triangles as they're not necessary when working with foam.

Once that was done, I lay the pieces down on foam that I'd already covered with PVA glue, I then covered the top with PVA in order to ensure that it was stuck fast. I repeated this process for the other half of the shell and left the whole thing in an airing cupboard to dry.

Once dried it was simple enough to cut the foam out to match the paper laid on top of it. When it was cut to match I could easily peel the paper off. Once the whole thing was cut out I hot-glued the whole thing together. Unfortunately I'm missing a picture of how the shell looks at this stage, but I'm sure you can imagine.

Since the shells are rigid, the next part of the process involved the use of paperclay. Although choices for this like fibreglass or Jesmonite ( A UK produced, non toxic alternative) exist, I went with paper clay. A relatively lightweight and surprisingly sturdy alternative for making solid props. The upside is that paper clay can be made at home with relatively inexpensive ingredients. (As seen here) Having made a batch, I coated the exterior of the shell with it, using a two liter bottle to help keep the shell's form and left it to set for 24 hours in an airing cupboard.

Once paper clay dries out it goes almost rock solid and the shape is set, as seen below.

With the exterior done, I also coated the shell's interior, leaving that to set for a further 12 hours.

Once the whole thing had dried out, I coated the exterior with a layer of polyfiller in order to fill in all the small dips and cracks to make sanding the whole thing down a simpler process, I then left the shell to dry again.

SO, what did we learn?

1. Follow the recipe. What you're seeing above is the succesful batch of paperclay. I actually repeated this whole process for the larger rear shell, but where the recipe for paperclay is proportional ( being a UK resident the term 'cup' for me actually resulted in my use of a cup to measure quantities) I figured I could just double all the quantities, so where I'd used one roll of toilet paper before, I then used two. Turns out not all toilet rolls were made equal and that the two I used the second time around yielded a lot more paper than the first I had used, resulting in a soft, extremely mallable when dry, high paper content clay that I could simply peel off the shell whereas the first batch stuck tight to the foam immediately.
2. Remain consistent with ingredients. Toilet roll is the obvious one, but in the second batch I also used standard polyfiller as apposed to the fine cracks variety that I'd used previously. Despite using four times what I had the first time around to try to offset the paper, standard polyfiller doesn't adhere as wel, nor set as rigid as the fineline crack variety.

The next stage is going to be a hopefully more succesful attempt to coat the rear shell in a better batch of paperclay. Whilst that's drying I'll also take a stab at sanding the first shell to a smooth finish. Although I could start constructing the barrel now, I'd rather wait until both shells are done as they're the most distinctive part of the gun and the other components revolve around them.