During the creator’s commentary in Portal 2, Valve animator Richard Lord called the eye portion of loveable personality sphere Wheatley’s design a physical impossibility. Cosplayer Furin’s talking Wheatley puppet seems to have done well enough.
After Portal 2‘s release made her switch gears from her planned Fullmetal Alchemist cosplay for this year’s Dragon*Con, cosplayer Furin switched a few gears of her own, transforming Valve’s brilliant though admittedly-flawed design into a living, blinking, and quipping machine. She’s managed to capture all of the personality voice actor Stephen Merchant and animators like Lord (the original voice of Wheatley) instilled in the glowing mechanical eyeball in one conveniently portable package.
Furin will be making an appearance next month at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia, so I might get a chance to drool over Wheatley in person. Hit up the link below to see the hours of painstaking work she put into creating this most human of machine “intelligences”.
Wheatley [Furin Cosplay - Thanks Tim!]
WiseHacker
Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10:39 AMNow that is great! Furin wouldn’t happen to be a Muppetier, would he/she? The accuracy and skill is only compariable to a Jim Henson Muppet.
WiseHacker
Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10:40 AMSorry, force of habit: I always write he/she when refering to Internet articles as the gender is often hidden.
WalkableBuffalo
Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 3:41 PMIt says ‘her’ in the article
Sam Timmins
Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 4:22 PMFunny thing from “Final Hours of Portal 2″:
An ex-Henson puppeteer from Fraggle Rock WORKS FOR VALVE.
Cool huh?
(She compared how Gabe runs things to how Jim did, very open and relaxed, yet with deadlines too.)
Tim H
Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 4:48 PMThe in game design is a physical impossibility. The puppet was made possible because the inner sphere of this puppet is no sphere at all. Thus allowing the ‘eyelids’ to function properly.