Portal 2 Wheatley Prop

Hi all you members of internet land! Today I'm gonna be teaching you how I built my life-sized Wheatley replica from the game Portal 2!

MATERIALS
you are going to need:
Sheets of "Fun Foam"
a Styrofoam ball (Ours was about 9 inches in diameter)
thick paper plates
an LED push-button light
a spinning stool-chair-thing
screws
and paint

Step 1:

determine the size of your Styrofoam ball. you need to measure the circumference and diameter.
Make sure you have enough "Fun Foam" to fill the dimensions of [Circumference x diameter]

Step 2:

cut the foam out so that it looks like a flattened globe. it should look somewhat like this shape:
()()()()()()
hot glue these pieces together so that it forms a sphere-ish shape (don't glue the last two together yet)

Step 3:

carve pieces out of the Styrofoam ball to make holes for the eye and "ears" (the eye hole should be deep enough to hold the LED light without it protruding too much beyond the surface.)

Step 4:

cut out the foam into the different shapes that make up Wheatley's "shell". We used reference pictures from the game as well as some fan made 3D models to determine these shapes.
We researched from multiple sources, but this site proved the most helpful: http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/wheatley-video-character-robot-3d-model/602446

We used foam to cover most of the sphere. We also used it for various detailing elements.

Step 5:

Color the LED light with a blue sharpie (sounds dumb, but it works) Our LED light happened to already have a crack in it that oddly resembles the crack that Wheatley has at the end of the game.

Step 6:

Paint everything. we used multiple shades of white, gray and brown for the aging to give him that "metal beat-up" look. we also made a reverse paper cut-out of the Aperture logo and used it as a stencil. make sure to use plenty of reference pictures to make sure what you are painting is accurate and on scale. Once everything dries, screw and hot glue the pieces into the Styrofoam ball. paint over these screws to make them less obvious.

Step 7:

The next step is to make the handles that act as "eyebrows". We used a thick paper plates and cut them out in the shape of the handle sides and painted these gray. Next we rolled up pieces of the "Fun Foam" to make the cylindrical parts of the handles and secured them by stapling them into position. We painted these and hot glued them to the paper plate pieces. We screwed these into the sides of the Wheatley model and covered the screws with circular foam pieces.

By this point you could call your model complet e. You can carry around your Wheatley with your portal gun, or launch him into space just for giggles, but we took it a step further and made our model connect to the ceiling like Wheatley does when attached to his rail at the beginning of Portal 2.

Step 8: EXTRA STEP 1

Take a rolling swivel chair apart to get the telescoping bar that connects the base to the seat. Once you have this piece isolated, you can attach it to the top of your Wheatley model. We used a lot of screws and hot glue to secure this piece.

Step 9: EXTRA STEP 2

We screwed the part that connected to the seat of the chair into the ceiling of the room. we painted a black and gray "Rail" around this piece to convey Wheatley's rail.

AND YOU ARE DONE!!!! Go admire your Wheatley model while playing your favorite video game. Testing will never be dull with this exciting little guy in your room. He may be an idiot, but he will be your best friend. (Other than the companion cube, of course)

This model can also be used to make any of the Personality Cores from the game Portal 2 just by coloring the LED light differently.

So what are you waiting for? Go make yourself a great Wheatley!!!