The blog of Jeremiah Warren

5 Common Misconceptions About George Washington

jeremiahjw — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:22:33 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V_d3oHc2vE

Sources:

http://www.mountvernon.org/content/facts-falsehoods-about-george-washington-0

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1551/was-george-washington-not-the-first-u-s-president

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6875436/#.USERJVpAT_Nhttp://artofadulthood.hubpages.com/hub/The-Ten-Presidents-Before-George-Washington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington

http://www.mountvernon.org/educational-resources/encyclopedia/false-teeth

http://mountvernon.patch.com/articles/did-george-washington-chop-down-a-cherry-tree

http://georgewashingtoninn.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/the-legend-of-the-cherry-tree/

http://kenmore.org/education/kidstuff/legends.htmlhttp://gwpapers.virginia.edu/project/faq/index.html

2013 Super Bowl Commercials Remix

jeremiahjw — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:30:37 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjHaZN3xMM

I’ve always wanted to do one of those remix videos. The perfect opportunity came up with the 2013 Super Bowl. I downloaded all the commercials and edited out interesting sound bits or shots in the videos. For example, someone catching on fire, a guy being thrown into a wall, a canon shooting confetti, etc. I started noticing trends in the commercials. There were 4 commercials that had horses in them (including one with a guy wearing a horse head mask). Two commercials referenced milk. 6 commercials had fire or things on fire. Two of them involved space.

There were a lot of sound bits I was able to combine together. My favorite is when I took a sound bit from the Fast and Furious Trailer. The line “They’ve got a tank” goes right along with the line “No they don’t”, taken from the Audi “Prom” commercial.

2012 Told Through Twitter – Year in Review

jeremiahjw — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:21:26 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY2IDOKyDtw

Last year I did a video that told about the major events from 2011 using Tweets. The video ended up getting 270,000 views and was featured on a number of popular websites. I wanted to do something similar this year, but more refined. I was thinking of doing one that told about the events in 2012 using social media (not just Twitter). In the end, I had to go back to just using Twitter. It was really hard to find Instagram photos taken during an event from 7 months ago, and you can’t really search Facebook profile posts.

I did partner up with Storify to make this video. Their site was very useful in finding Tweets and organizing them for the video. If it was’t for them I probably wouldn’t have been able to complete the video on time.

The History of Theodore [Teddy] Roosevelt

jeremiahjw — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:16:59 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_5yNiTEfVw

I first thought of doing a video about Teddy Roosevelt last year, but was too busy with other projects. I *almost* ended up not doing it this year, but I knew that Teddy was a person that people would enjoy learning about, so I went through with the project. It did take me two all-nighters to finish it on time. :P

Cute Scottish Fold Kitten

jeremiahjw — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:13:59 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1h3VCsuo_Q

This was sort of a random video for me. I was noticing the antics of a Scottish Fold kitten and thought I’d get some footage of it. What I captured ended up looking pretty good, so I decided to edit it into this short video. My only complaint is that I wasn’t able to move the focus, which gives that cliche’ “DSLR look”, but other than that I like it.

Creating a video for the Internet 2012 Bus Tour

jeremiahjw — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 06:10:14 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjkJeh1iA0

In mid September (last week as of this post) the Reddit admins posted about an event that the co-founder and general manager of Reddit were putting together. The Internet 2012 bus tour. The TL;DR version is that they are taking a bus across the midwest to raise awareness of internet freedom during the 2012 elections. I left a comment saying how I’d love to create an animated video for this event, and was surprised to get a response from Alexis Ohanian and Erik Martin (co-founder and general manager).

I had a very short deadline, was prepping to leave for Colorado in a little over a week, and was finishing two other projects. These factors led to me going with the simple sketch style and creating a script under 2 minutes in length. I enlisted my talented artist friend Cory Taylor to create the illustrations, this really helped, I don’t think I would have finished the video if he hadn’t helped me.

He and I wrote a rough draft of the script and went over illustration ideas.

Due to the aforementioned time constraints I went with a really simple sketch for the characters and used a real photo of a face for the head.

The storyboards were very simple, I let Cory play with the design of the sketches, I just told him what

I wanted, and occasionally gave specific instructions on a few items.

Cory drew the sketches in GIMP and I animated everything in After Effects CS6. It was the first time I used CS6 since upgrading from CS4. It’s quite an improvement and was blazing fast on my new retina display MacBook Pro (16GB ram and solid state drives). I did decide that I’ll need to use an external monitor, things did get cramped in After Effects when I was working on just a 15 inch display.

So that’s a quick rundown of the whole process of creating this video. There are a lot of things I’d like to change, but I’m pretty happy with it seeing all the time and schedule constraints I had.

Rarely seen photographs from the September 11th attacks in NYC

jeremiahjw — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 20:04:01 +0000

11 years ago digital cameras were not as common as they are today. They were expensive or bulky and took low quality photographs. There were also very few ways to publish your photographs online for many people to see. Contrast that to today where anyone that owns a cellphone has a decent quality still picture camera and can post an image online in front of thousands of people within seconds after capturing it. When the events of 9/11 took place there was a flood of photographs taken by professional photographers and members of the press, but you didn’t see many featured photographs that were taken by everyday people because of the limitations on technology and the internet at the time.

For the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers I decided to curate a set of photographs taken by everyday people that most of you haven’t seen. Thanks to the internet these people have been able to publish them to Flickr, but most of them have less than a thousand, or even less than a hundred views. I found it so fascinating going through Flicker and finding these images, images that very few people had seen. It was like I was witnessing history again, but from an angle that no one had ever shown. I decided to share these photographs with all of you.

For those images that were taken on a digital camera, I’ve made a note of the model of said camera. All images are hosted on the account of the person that owns the photographs, none of them were taken down and re-hosted.

Seconds after flight 175 struck the South Tower. Taken with a Canon PowerShot S100 by George Weld.

Marc Garrett, about this image he captured. “The second plane flew directly over my head and slammed into the south tower. It took me a few seconds to get my head together, and this was the shot I took. I’m not a professional photojournalist, but I believe having a camera in my hand and feeling like a I had a “job” to do helped me keep my head.”

The photographer who took this photo mentions that at the time it didn’t occur to him how bad of an idea it was to walk so close to the tower right after it was struck. Later he discovered that he had been hit in the leg by a piece of falling metal, but didn’t notice it until hours later after he had settled down. If you read the comments you’ll find one by the owner of the open delivery truck you see in this image. He mentioned that the driver of the truck, seen in the blue shirt and pants survived the ordeal. The truck, however, was crushed. This image and the following were taken on an Olympus E-10.

This image struck me on a deep emotion level. In the midst of the chaos and destruction there were still people willing to show their selflessness and cover the remains of the victims.

Taken a few moments after the second tower was hit, you can see the cloud of paper floating through the air. Photograph by Ronald Smits.

You can see the outline of the plane’s wing span. Photograph by Hiro.

I think this image speaks for itself. Photograph by Luke Kurtis.

Photographer Jay Boucher says: “My wife had called me that morning to let me know she was safe. “Huh?” I said. She told me to turn on the TV and there was the Trade Center, burning. I grabbed my cameras and ran out to Hoboken’s Pier A. This is what I saw”.

Photograph by George Weld, taken on a Canon PowerShot S100.

Photograph by Michael Foran, taken on an Olympus C2000Z.

Photographed by Harvey Silikovitz on Houston Street in Greenwich Village. “An out-of-town TV reporter who is covering the 9/11 tragedy looks at the smoke emanating from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, a couple of miles to the south. Taken during my pre-digital days, this picture happened to be on a roll that for some reason I had gotten burned onto a CD when I got it developed.”

A rescue team taking off to attempt a rooftop rescue. They never made it. Photograph by Bryan Thatcher, taken with a Sony Cybershot.

Photographer Michael Foran says “This man was overcome with emotion as we listened to the calls of the Firemen and Police trapped in the rubble of the collapsed towers on his police scanner radio.”

Photograph by Eddy, taken on an Olympus C3000Z

It looks like this woman is shooting with an Olympus film camera. I think I still have the same lens and camera. Photograph by Marc AuMarc.

Photograph by George Weld, taken on a Canon PowerShot S100.

There are a lot of photographs of messages scrawled into the dust covering the cars. I can’t make out what the note says. Photograph by Marc AuMarc.

Photographer Hiro says “The firemen were utterly covered by the debris. We all could tell that a lot of it was asbestos, though no one said it outloud. It crossed my mind that this could be the real terror, if all the people around became ill after the fact.”

Taken with a Nikon E990 by George Hackett.

Photograph by Shayna Marchese. Her father posted this image on his Flickr account, he says “This is 6th Avenue and there was no traffic on it at all. Just pedestrians beginning to realize that the first tower had fallen.”

Photographer Brian Boyd says “I’m running North on West Side Highway, just one block from Chambers street. The tower just collapsed seconds before this photo.”

Photograph by George Hackett

Photograph by George Hackett.

Photograph by Bryan Thatcher, taken on a Sony Cybershot.

The photographer that took this photo says he doesn’t recall taking it as everyone fled the debris cloud created by the collapse of the South Tower.

Photographer Santi-Jose says “I never go down to that area of the city during the week, but there I was on that morning. chance or fate? I was to witness this moment in history. ever since that day seven years ago I almost never leave the house without my camera.”

Brooklyn onlookers. Photograph by Hans.

Photograph by Ken Eng. Taken on a Fujifilm FinePixS1 Pro.

Photograph by Ken Eng.

Photographed by Rob Sheridan from his Brooklyn apartment, on a Canon EOS D30.

This was taken the day after 9/11, on September 12th, by Eddy.

The History of Trivia – the Trivia Behind Trivia

jeremiahjw — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 05:56:23 +0000

I worked with the company MobileFWD in my latest video. I took an infographic they created for their trivia app and turned it into a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2_8GO_wYT0

The drawings were created in Photoshop and then everything was animated in After Effects.

Click here for more screenshots.

Artwork took about 2 days to complete, animation was another 2 or 3 days. The music is Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No 3, 3rd movement.

Thanks to the following sites for posting about the video:

Mashable - http://mashable.com/2012/07/16/history-of-trivia/

Alltop - http://holykaw.alltop.com/think-you-know-trivia-a-history-of-trivia-vid

Below are my sources, plus some extra information if you want to read more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivia

http://voices.yahoo.com/trivia-trivia-origins-history-trivia-393228.html?cat=37

http://www.buzztime.com/blog-trivia/1004-buzztime-web-comic-3-history-of-trivia.html

http://artgib.hubpages.com/hub/Trivia-Games-Cultural-Staple

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivial_pursuit

http://boardgames.lovetoknow.com/Who_Invented_Trivia_Board_Games

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/weekinreview/06murphy.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FunTrivia

http://triviatriviatrivia.blogspot.com/2005/04/origin-of-trivia.html

http://www.word-detective.com/052206B.html#trivia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_jennings

http://universityhonors.umd.edu/HONR269J/projects/venanzi.html

http://telewatcher.com/game-shows/game-show-history/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_One_(game_show)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_$64,000_Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiz_show_scandals

Making an aerial video of exploding fireworks

jeremiahjw — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 06:36:44 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oV0-pgUctw

If you have any questions, just post them as a comment and I’ll try to answer them. You can find me on Facebook here.

Click here for an album of iPhone photos documenting the shooting process.

For the 4th of July I wanted to make a follow-up type video to the one I did last July 4th that involved me putting tiny cameras on fireworks and launching them up into the air. This time I thought I’d put the camera up in the air and have it looking down. It ended up being more difficult than I imagined.

Here is the sketch I drew about two months ago showing my idea for the video.

My plan was to buy a giant helium balloon and tie it down with two strings, the GoPro camera would be suspended below the balloon. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do this video. It wasn’t until GoPro released their Wi-Fi BacPac that I decided to go through with the idea. The Wifi BacPac allowed you to remotly control your GoPro camera and to view the video live on your iPhone or iPad. I knew this would be perfect because I’d be able to see how the shots were framed and if I was getting the fireworks on camera.

I bought the Wifi BacPac, 2 outdoor 3 foot balloons…

and two canisters of party balloon helium from WalMart.

I also obtained a few fireworks, I stuck with mortars and the large stick fireworks. My plans were going well so far until I found out that GoPro hadn’t released the iPhone/iPad app for the $100 BacPac I purchased. Apparently they didn’t think they needed to have some text explaining that the app wasn’t out yet. Oh well, at least I’d be able to remotely turn the camera on and off with the remote.

The first attempt at filming went well, but I had a tiny problem. My balloons stopped going up in the air at a certain point. I attached about 10 party balloons to the two large 3 foot balloons, and it still stopped going up into the air. I was perplexed and frustrated. The footage I got wasn’t that good because the balloons didn’t go above the exploding fireworks, I just got a bunch of shots of the fireworks flying past.

I decided to try it again, I purchased 4 more giant balloons. Thankfully before I bought any more party balloon helium I found out that the stuff sold specifically for balloons usually has other gasses in it, so the height the balloons go is limited. I purchased a giant tank of helium from a welding supply company for about $75, which was actually cheaper than the party balloon helium at Walmart. I did have to put down a $150 deposit on the tank, but that was refunded after I returned it.

I switched from thick fishing rope to 20lb test fishing line. I bought one of those spools you use for kite string, took off the string that was on it, and added my fishing line onto the spool. It took a while to wind 450 yards of line, but in the end it was worth it.

This time I attached 3 balloons to the camera, just to make sure I had enough to get it up in the air. This time the balloons went up really high…but…they stopped going up. I had a small problem…wind. The balloons would be blown sideways, if I let more line out they would just go further and further away, not straight up. Not only were the balloons not high enough, but the camera was being tossed around by the wind and balloon movement. Back to the drawing board.

I decide to scrap my camera attachment method after hearing about the Picavet system. It’s a rig that when made properly will keep your camera fairly level even if what it’s attached to is moving around. My dad and I put together a pretty nice looking rig from random parts we had laying around the house. This significantly improved the stability of the camera.

Click here to get info on making your own Picavet system. It took three more attempts at filming to find a moment where the wind had died down, but I eventually got the shots I wanted.

I’d say this video is the most difficult one I’ve done because I wasn’t expecting to have issues with wind, the camera mount, and the right type of helium. I’m not sure if I would do something like this again because it was hard to get a moment where the wind stopped moving, and even then the wind picked back up a little bit after the balloons were high enough. However, it was a fun project, and I learned a lot. Hopefully you find the resulting video amusing/enjoyable.

Thanks to the following sites/blogs for writing/posting about this video!

CNN - http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2012/07/05/vo-slow-mow-fireworks-from-above.jeremiahwarren

Good.is/Mike Senese - http://www.good.is/post/diy-aerial-photo-rig-gets-bird-s-eye-view-of-fireworks-30daysofgood/

The Daily What - http://thedailywh.at/2012/07/04/early-bird-special-335/

BoingBoing - http://boingboing.net/2012/07/02/slow-motion-aerial-birds-eye-v.html

PetaPixel - http://www.petapixel.com/2012/07/03/slow-motion-footage-of-fireworks-exploding-from-a-birds-eye-view/

Laughing Squid - http://laughingsquid.com/slow-motion-video-of-fireworks-exploding-from-an-aerial-view/

CBS News - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504784_162-57465979-10391705/early-start-to-the-4th-of-july-with-slow-motion-birds-eye-view-of-fireworks-exploding

Fail Blog - http://failblog.org/2012/07/04/epic-win-photos-win-fireworks-pov-win/

Viral Videos - http://www.viralviralvideos.com/2012/07/02/birds-eye-view-of-fireworks/

Prop Making Guide: Creating a ASHPD Portal Gun

jeremiahjw — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:05:25 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paFc8XwEneE

If you have any questions, just post them as a comment and I’ll try to answer them.

You can find me on Facebook here.

Last year I decided to try to make a replica of the Portal gun in light of the upcoming release of Portal 2. At the time, it was just Harrison Krix, A.K.A. Volpin Props that had made an authentic looking Portal gun. There were a few really poorly made Portal guns out there , his was really the only good one.

I thought it would be fun to make a Portal gun, and be one of the few people out there to make one that looked authentic.

You have to understand that up to this point I had zero prop making experience, and my arts and crafts experience was limited to finger painting as a kid. I had assisted my dad in building projects, so I knew how to use tools, but he had designed the structure and bought the parts. If you had a list of people that you would want to make something like this for you, I would be at the very bottom of the list.

Many people have commented on my Portal gun, saying how they would love to be able to make something like it, but didn’t know how to do it. I was that person, I had no idea how to make anything prop related, but I had a vision, and I wanted to see it come to life, so I set out to create this Portal gun. I’m making this tutorial for people like me, who didn’t have the skills, but want to try prop making. If you have experience in prop making you can learn what I wish I had done differently and use that information in your own build. :P

Here is the final result, I’m going to show you how I made this:

If it wasn’t for the tutorial that Harrison Krix had made I would have never done this. It was his post that inspired me to try this myself, and when I finally decided to go through this I studied his tutorial intently. Other than the electronics of the gun, the build was fairly simple. He used PVC for the barrel portions, and green florists foam, bondo, apoxie sculpt, and Wonderflex Plastic for the white casing parts. I somehow came across a wonderful community/forum called Replica Props and was able to ask questions from seasoned prop builders.

Thankfully for all of you, there are other people that have posted details on how they made their own gun. I’ll mention some of their techniques, but if you want to read in-depth you can check these forum threads out:

http://volpinprops.blogspot.com/2009/01/testing.html

http://www.therpf.com/f9/portal-gun-upgrade-wip-143637/

http://www.therpf.com/f9/portal-gun-finally-finished-113268/

http://www.therpf.com/f9/portal-gun-scratch-first-build-124307/

http://www.therpf.com/f9/my-portal-gun-build-108710/

http://www.therpf.com/f9/handheld-portal-device-thinking-portals-113086/

http://www.therpf.com/f9/oh-god-not-another-one-aka-sharks-113475/

http://www.therpf.com/f9/ashpd-portal-gun-image-heavy-just-way-115139/

http://www.therpf.com/f24/image-heavy-chell-portal-2-progress-ashpd-118627/

http://www.chr157.com/2011/09/aperture-science-handheld-portal-device.html

http://www.therpf.com/f9/dark-jedi-1640s-portal-gun-signed-jon-117256/

I found a blueprint of the Portal gun, scaled it up in Photoshop to about 19 inches, and printed it out.

I settled for that length as that scale fit the length of the PVC diameters that Harrison used in his Portal gun. Later I found out that his V1 was 21 inches, and the V2 gun was 22 inches because of a slightly longer barrel and chamber section.

I started with the white shells since they would take longer. I used Styrofoam to construct a general shape of the rear shell and put foil inside it so that I could spray on my insulating foam and get a shell with a hollow center. I used Great Stuff Gaps and Cracks for the insulating foam. There was another one that cost a little more, but when it dried it wasn’t as hard.

Spraying on the foam was pretty fun…I got to make a giant messy blob.

After it was done I then cut it with an Xacto knife and sanded it down with an electric sander to get it looking like this.

I stuck a hunk of expanding foam under the shell to keep the sides from spreading apart.

I covered the foam with paper mache’ clay. Click here to find out how to make it. I didn’t add linseed oil, I didn’t want to buy a giant container of it and only use 2 tablespoons. All it does is make the paste smoother and less sticky. This is what the top shell looked like after I sanded it down once the paste dried. It took several days, I had a giant fan blowing on it the entire time. The result is a very hard surface.

The duct tape is where I had to extend the edges, I added some more paste and did more sanding to get this. I was using a rotary sander for overall sanding of the shell, and hand sanded for the detailed areas.

Here is what it looks like underneath the large shell.

The next photo involves a few mid-steps that have regretfully failed to get photos of, so I’ll try to explain it with text and some photos of other Portal gun builds. I repeated the foam process for the smaller shell, the one that goes under the barrel and that you rest your hand on. I had to cut the large shell in half and stick it back together so that I could get the indention down the middle. I rushed through the cutting process so the cut was a little uneven at the end, but it’s at the back so you can’t really tell.

My version of the casings isn’t the best way to do it, so here are some alternatives by other people that have made Portal gun replicas.

2StoryProps made his shells by covering the PVC base with wax paper and building up a base with the Apoxie Sculpt.

He then used bondo to fill in the rest

Caleb Neal sanded down a block of foam with a rotary sander

And then added bondo on top of that

A really cheap way is to get a pepakura file and print it out on paper. Pepakura is where you take a 3D model and use a program that cuts it up into flat shapes that can be printed out on paper. You then cut the shapes out and tape them together, and you get a perfect scale paper model that you can cover with whatever material you want, such as resin or fiberglass. Click here for an Instructables article that details the steps of making a Halo helmet using the Pepakura method. It’s not Portal, but it’s the same technique.

This was made by NilProps, you’d only need to use the Pepakura method for the shells.

From there you could cover it with resin, putty, and wood braces like Justin Black.

And then you sand it down and get a very accurately shaped shell.

As you can see, you have a few options for the shells. Do whatever is easiest for you. I repeated the process for the smaller shell, this is what the foam base looked like.

For the portion under the rear shell I took two 4 inch PVC couplings and stuck them together with glue.

Now for the barrel. I had a section of 4 inch PVC and 3 inch PVC. The 3 inch goes inside the 4 inch, and I cut a curved hole in the section of both pieces. This was one of the most difficult parts, it was hard cutting a curve on a curved surface.

I used a plumb line to mark the straight edges along the pipes.

The next step is to add partitions for the indented groves.Caleb Neal set his up better than mine (plus I didn’t get a good shot before adding the paint and sculpt). The flat pieces of material is what allows you to make the indented grooves. It can be any solid material, such as styrene or ABS plastic.

This build by 2StoryProps gives you an idea of what it would look like after you cut down the plastic inserts and added bondo or apoxie sculpt.

Here is a preliminary fitting of all the parts I had so far. I had just stuck apoxie sculpt between the two sections of PVC.

Here is what it looked like after I added the apoxie sculpt between the cracks, painted it over, and sanded it down.

The nozzle part of the barrel got a little more complicated. 2StoryProps used bondo, PVC, and medium0-density fiberboard to construct this portion.

I’ve seen others use PVC, and add a bunch of apoxie sculpt on top then sand it down using a lathe. It’s difficult to make this entirely out of PVC as you have to still bevel the edges and find PVC that will fit inside the standardized 3 inch size that you’ve made the barrel with. This person somehow managed to do that.

This build combined PVC parts with some finishing using apoxie sculpt.

I took my 3 inch PVC and managed to find a PVC T-Valve that had ends small enough to fit inside. I sawed off the ends and stuck them between sections of the 3 inch PVC.

If you’re confused by my explanation, hopefully this photo makes more sense.

Here you can see what it looked like after I stuck the parts together and added it to the main barrel.

It turned out that the valve ends were tapered, not straight, which meant that I had to do a lot of sanding to make them fit inside the 3 inch PVC. If I did it over again I would find some plastic tubes from eStreetPlastics that would fit the inside diameter of the 3 inch PVC. You would then add the tapered edges with apoxie sculpt or bondo.

Now, going back to the main shell. After the paper mache’ clay dried I sanded it down and used apoxie sculpt to fill in groves/uneven areas.

After the apoxie sculpt dried I sanded it and covered it in the first layer of primer.

I added apoxie sculpt between the seams of the two 4 inch couplings that I connected and sanded it down. I did have to cut a section in the middles so that I would be able to get the electronics and such from the shell into the barrel.

After sanding the seams I gave it a coat of primer and sanded that smooth.

The majority of the rest of the time I spent on this project consisted of spot filling with apoxie sculpt, sanding, and covering everything with multiple layers of primer.

I suggest using alternating colors of primer so you can get an idea of what level you have sanded into.

The sanding and layering of primer takes the most time, and it is what sells the look. If you have a dimpled surface it won’t give you a nice glossy finish. I suggest something in the range of 100-400 grit for your sandpaper. You will want to invest in a sanding block. You might be tempted to use a higher grit sandpaper to sand things down faster, but if you use too large of a grit you will get deep groves, which then have to be sanded out. Here is what the shell and barrel looked like as I neared completion.

For the center core I bought about 6 inches of acrylic tube that fit the inside diameter of the 3 inch PVC. EStreetPlastics had what I needed. Something in the range of 8-10 inches would have been a better choice. For the glowing core part I bought a plastic toilet plunger from Lowes, cut off the ends of the handle, and sanded it down to give it a frosted look. I made the circular portions with apoxie sculpt, Volpin made his with ABS plastic which I think looks better (his version is in the below image).

Here is what my core looked like, sans the plastic and with the wiring.

The rest of the finishings are not as polished as I would have liked. I was making this for a video project, so it didn’t have to be 100% accurate. I’ll cover some details that others put on their build that I didn’t put on mine.

The claws on my gun are pretty pitiful. I threw them together at the last minute with 1 inch wood strips. The tips were made from apoxie sculpt and sanded down.

Some other materials you could use are ABS plastic, PVC, medium-density fiberboard, aircraft plywood, and bakeable clay or apoxie sculpt like I used. You might want to add bolts at the claw hinges. On my gun I made the knobs that the claws and tubes attach to out of apoxie sculpt that was sanded down. The tubing is automotive windshield washer tubing.

(these are the claws made by Volpin, not me)

Volpin hacked up a paper spindle to get the “diffuser” inside the barrel.

Once the barrel and main shell had been sanded enough I applied the final paint layer (you can also see the claws I constructed in this photo).

I discovered that you need to stand back with the can of spray paint in your hand and cover the object in a cloud of paint. Don’t get close up or you will cause streaking of the paint. I should have added multiple layers of the top coat and wet sanded each one with 2,000 grit wet/dry sandpaper. The white shells were covered with gloss white paint. Finally I added a gloss clear enamel.

I made a major mistake in applying the clear enamel. The white gloss hadn’t dried long enough and I applied a heavy coat of the enamel all at once. I don’t have a good photo of what happened, but I found someone else that had a similar issue on their Portal gun, this is what it looks like.

In the end, the paint job on my shells didn’t come out as good as I had hoped, but I learned some very valuable lessons…don’t rush stuff like this. I was able to salvage it by sanding off the paint, but I used a very low grit sandpaper which left groves on the shell (only noticeable close up). The barrel was painted with a gloss black paint and given a matte enamel coat. I added a black stripe down the top of the large shell.

To get the logo and aperture image on the shell I printed off some wet slide decals. Since I was using an inkjet printer I had to spray clear acrylic over the decals after they printed off. You cut out the decal, stick it in water (which removes it from the backing) and apply it to the surface you want the decal on. It’s fairly simple and easy to do. You can get the decals here.

I haven’t played much with electronics, so I can’t really give you a good guide to setting up the lighting in the gun. I attached the LEDs to a circular electrical board from RadioShack, but the electricity wasn’t derived from the board, I just used that as a surface to attach the LEDs to.

I had 6 blue LEDs and 6 orange LEDs in the barrel. There were four blue and orange LEDs (two of each color) on each end of the core.

The inside of the barrel on my gun wasn’t very smooth, and I didn’t have that diffuser, so if you looked down the barrel it was kinda odd looking. I took this photo in the bathroom so that I could turn out the lights and get complete darkness. :P

To connect the barrel lights with the battery under the shell I ran the wires under the core.

I had an orange and blue LED running up under the shell to light the little area on top.

Everything was controlled with one switch. I could go from orange to blue, or turn it all off.

It all was connected inside the PVC section under the large shell.

I’m not the best when it comes to building electronics, so I had to get some help on a forum. You can read the forum thread to get detailed information on how I put the electronics portion of the gun together.

So there you have it! That is the process I went through to make my Portal gun. In all, it cost $300-$350, but it was a very good learning experience and I would do it again. I hope to try other props soon, or maybe doing set design or model work. If you have any questions, post a comment and I’ll try to answer it.