Please, ma'am; the dog ate my Arpeture Science Handheld Portal Device!

Alright, not ate more smashed up.

Unfortunately, due to both unfortunate dog impacts and the huge rush I engaged in towards the end of the project I'm lacking photos of the finished project. I can still walk you through the main processes involved.

So above we have the expanding foam once it's expanded and set. It's really surprising how much mass you get at the end of it as the large shell's gone from being a bit larger than the cardboard base to two thirds the width of the table. Adding the fins on to the base really helped the foam stay in place and you can even see where those fins are in the foam's ridges. It also seems like moistening the cardboard a bit helped the foam stick and not applying it too thickly has had it dry nice and solidly.

The foam's surprisingly solid once it's set properly. I had to resort to using ridged knives to carve the foam rather than cut it with a stanley knife as I'd originally intended to. I started the cutting process by cutting along the edges of the bases.

Once I'd got the basic shape of the shells sorted out it was just a case of cutting the foam down until it was the right thickness and more curved than lots of flat edges.

Once I'd gotten the shells to the right size it was then a case of adding extra details on such as the ridges at the end of the barrel. Not pirctured below is the handle.

With the shells cut I used filler to fill in any overly large abcesses.

Now, in a perfect world I wound have had time to sand these too a smooth finish, apply a thin layer of paperclay and then sand that smooth. Unfortunately I was really short on time, so the quick and easy method to create a smooth and slightly solid surface was good old fasioned paper maché. One thing I learned about paper maché is that it should never be spray painted. Due to it sticking closely to whatever surface it's applied to, any sort of gloss finish really highlights an uneven surface. Whilst a matte finish with poster paint may have sort of hidden the faults a glossy finish really highlighted the flaws, as seen below.

 

Ugh.

Past this point, there wasn't a lot left to do, I sprayed the main body of the gun with black spray paint which gave it a surprisingly good colour despite the body not being coated with plastidip. The gun's 'arms' were simply made of cardboard strips with foam wrapped around them also sprayed back and attached to the front shell and midway down the barrel.

So, what did we learn?

1. Dooooooooooooooooogs!
2. Estimate the time required for a project if you're doing it to a deadline. Double it, then double it again. 

All in all, the most important thing I've learned in this project is that I should focus on the core aspects of an item and then work outwards into exterior details once I've got the solid foundations made, otherwise you wind up with the shell situation from earlier and not enough time to finish things up well.

Also, the expanding foam seems like a material that could be used in a lot of other projects.

Also, dogs. 

Unfinished prop: Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device

Not a big post, this one, but after three days of on and off work I felt like just posting something. So here it is!

Ta-da!

It doesn't look like a massive leap, but the amount of work that's gone into this shell at this point has been pretty intense. Once the shell had totally dried I gave the exterior a coating of joint compound (polyfiller)  to fill in all the deep recesses and started sanding. Once I'd sanded it, I filled in all the extra areas with more filler and I've essentially had to repeat this process about 10 times in order to get what you see before you. The exterior edges are still a big rough as they were extremely inconsistent so I've had to add a lot of filler to even them out. For the sanding I've been starting off with 50 grit sandpaper, sanding down all the really obvious lumps and bumps, moving to 80 to do finer work and then finishing it up with 120 grit. In places it's perfectly smooth, but due to my erratic texture that I left when I coated the shell with clay intially, it's rather lumpy in places.

Still, this gun was never going to be amazing, so I'll let myself off (although it's something to keep in mind). You can also still see that the inside looks like the bottom of f batcave, but I'm not sure I'll have the time to sand the whole thing smooth so there's some planning ahead to do on how to fudge that. I'm hoping I can cover up the majority of the inside of the shell with the gun barrel. I'm also thinking that; considering how well the exterior layer alone held the shape, I may only do an exterior layer on the rear shell in order to cut down on the workload as it'll be supported by the gun barrel and handle anyway.

So! What have we learned?

1. Sanding's hard and although the name of the activity suggests otherwise, it's not all about the sanding. I was surprised to discover that it's as much filling in gaps and building edges up with extra material as it is about wearing material away. If you were to just sand you'd never get anything smooth.
2. Not to coat the inside of the next shell with clay. Also, to try to finish the initial layer of paperclay on the outside so that it's much smoother than this one was. To save on both sanding and the amount of filler used.