Digitprop – Paper design

Portal’s P-body in paper

Ok, so this is another somewhat nerdy papercraft, matching the Frankenturrets I did some time ago. It’s P-body, one of the two coop mode robots featured in Portal 2.

This one was a bit tricky, as I had to compromise between the level of detail and complexity of the assembly. Therefore, it’s not entirely faithful to the original, but I’d say it’s close enough. On the up side, assembly is not without challenge, but very doable. One huge compromise I made was the portal gun. It’s not held by P-Body, but it’s attached to his right arm – ugh, I know. But anything more realistic would have made things really complicated.

P-body doesn’t lend itself very well to papercrafting – a spheroid body and long thin extremities aren’t exactly papercraft staples. Thus, I was quite surprised to find that this model is actually quite stable. If you do it right, it should stand firmly on its feet and will resist moderate attempts to tip it over.

You may wonder where ATLAS is, P-body’s trusted friend. Well, here is bad news: ATLAS is even more difficult, being more or less a perfect sphere. And although it may seem as if P-Body’s parts can be reused for ATLAS, in reality I would have to design most if not all parts from scratch.

Now, considering that I have very limited time for such pranks, chances of an ATLAS model are slim, very slim. At least for the forseeable future.

In the meantime, enjoy P-Body. Here is the template. It comes in two pages and results in a model of about 15cm height:

Page 1 (PDF)

Page 2 (PDF)