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CHELL OUT: Cosplaying ‘Portal’

I have a small confession to make.

It appears that I might not be the gamer geek that perhaps you hoped I’d be. And for this I apologize.

In my defense I didn’t realize that for years I had been overlooking quite an important game in terms of development, design, and cult popularity. I am only one woman with only so many hours of available gaming time in my life.

But earlier this month I was forcibly introduced to the game that I had heard of the many years ago that it appeared, and had since read about here and there but never made the effort to play. 

My boyfriend is a huge fan of the Portal series (not to be confused with the 1986 interactive novel Portal made for the Amiga.) The first time I went over to his place I noticed his “Aperture Science” shower curtain and made this connection, but didn’t really think much of it.

Honestly, I just thought it was a strange household item to have as a piece of gaming memorabilia and I never really brought it up. This past month I have educated myself however and am now a fully-fledged Portal fan.

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I now understand that the shower curtain is really a very cool addition to a bathroom indeed and I regret not bringing it up with him sooner.

In my quest to find out more about my new current favorite game, I inevitably ended up exploring many a cosplay related avenue and was really impressed with my findings.

In fact, it’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

As with most first person shooter style games, you very rarely see Portal’s protagonist, Chell, other than the gun she is holding. So catching enough of a glimpse to base a cosplay on may be difficult, no? However, with a quantum tunneling device (or portal-gun) almost anything is possible. Frequently throughout the games there are opportunities to create a window or mirror-like portal in a wall nearby through which you can have a good look at Chell and check out what she’s wearing and what she looks like for your costume.



She’s a very popular character from the series to cosplay, and this is completely understandable. Strong female characters in video games seem few and far between, but Chell’s ability to conquer physics and a giant insane robot makes her bad-ass enough for anyone to want to be her.

You can type “Chell Portal Costume” into Google and have a million shopping results appear that would all be a great starting point for a costume. The first thing that normally pops up is the orange jumpsuit, which features in both Portal 1 and Portal 2. In the first game she wears this fastened almost all the way up with her hair tied back in a long dark ponytail. All of this is easy to replicate, but the key to really getting it right is the Advanced Knee Replacements and portal gun.

Chell’s fancy new knees allow her to withstand just about any fall, provided it isn’t into that murky green water. You could make a pair of these quite easily using plastic or craft foam and molding it to your own shape and size.

The only trouble is, if you wanted to stay true to the character you would have to wear these instead of any other footwear, which could be problematic if you’re going to be outdoors on rough ground or in bad weather. In which case, you may be better off upgrading to Portal 2’s Long Fall Boots that are basically the same, but offer better protection for the soles of your feet, which is handy because the test chambers you revisit in in this game are often overgrown with plants, covered in rubble and full of puddles. The boots are again, something that you can make yourself although there are some incarnations of them available to buy online.

Another thing near the top of the Google search list are the Long Fall Boot socks, which are essentially just tube socks with the boot design printed on them. Pretty nifty as a novelty gift at Christmas or as a last minute addition to your costume, but not completely practical if you’re thinking of venturing out into the elements in your outfit.

I would recommend making your own boots by modifying a cheap pair of fake leather ones by cutting away and adding panels, decorating and adding straps with black and white duct tape and paint.

The best replicas I have found have all been modified regular boots that wouldn’t be hard or expensive to make at all. By making your own you can ensure that they are comfortable to wear. Replica costume items aren’t always made with comfort or variety of customer shapes and sizes in mind. This way you can try on a pair of shoes before you buy them, make sure they fit and only add or take away parts of the boots in places that wont rub or irritate you while you wear them.

Another difference in the Portal 2 Chell is that she only wears her jumpsuit fastened up to her waist and has a couple of layered tank tops on her upper half, a turquoise one under a white Aperture Science branded one. Again, these are very easy to get hold of or modify yourself. Purchasing some transfer paper and putting the Aperture logo onto a tank top yourself is easy enough, but you can also get hold of ready-made ones online.

The portal gun it’s self is what defines a Chell costume, and as with most cosplays, adding props generally boosts your costumes entire look. Despite Portal 2 being the most recent of the games to be released, the original replica of the gun used in Portal 1 (without the visible wear and tear that Portal 2’s gun has) is still available and is still expensive.

You can however get hold of miniature versions for a quarter of the price if you’re more interested in just having it on display in your house, or making fan videos with the gun using your cats as characters.

The Portal series at first glance, looks like the potential for cosplay characters is thin on the ground, as Chell really is the only ‘character’ in the game at all. But a quick Google search will show you that cosplaying Portal fans have gotten pretty creative with their outfits, branching out into the realms of the Lab Rat comic and dressing as Aperture Laboratories technicians and other characters suggested by the Portal back story. Some of them have even mastered the personification of inanimate objects, like companion cubes, turrets and even the cake!

The cake is a lie.

But the most important character in the series, is in fact an inanimate object that has been cosplayed over and over again, and been done to perfection by a few.

GLaDOS is the murderous Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System that deceivingly promises cake as she attempts to lure you to your death through a maze of test chambers. She is another masterpiece of a female leading character, the exploration of which in the second game is very interesting.

Throughout the games, GLaDOS’ form changes, which gives the cosplay a wider scope. The most commonly cosplayed version is the pristine, shiny, monochrome bot from Portal 1; although she does appear in several other forms, including a potato battery.

By TwinklePowderySnow

The most creative and accurate GLaDOS costume has to be the one Enayla made for PAX Prime 2013. This is GLaDOS at the point of reactivation at the start of Portal 2. Each detail has quite clearly been thoroughly thought out, including having someone (her dad maybe?) on standby to help her in and out of her costume WEARING AN APERTURE LABCOAT.

Every part of the costume screams commitment, and for the incredible quality of the finished article I’m amazed that her budget came in below $400 for the whole thing. I think this may be down to Worbla being her craft material of choice, which is reasonably priced and produces very little wastage due to it being re-shapeable in the case of a mistake. Worbla were so impressed with Enayla’s costume that it’s actually the first image featured on their website’s homepage!



Accuracy doesn’t always make one person’s costume better than another’s, but effort and attention to detail always make a costume more interesting to look at and more fun to make. You don’t have to get every tiny part of the outfit exactly right, sometimes just theming it with the right colors and adding props will do the job.

Your costume only has to be as close to the original article as you want it to be, as long as other fans recognize the key elements and can relate to your fandom then that’s a perfect cosplay. All characters and items in the Portal series translate well into costumes of different styles. It doesn’t take long to find inspiration online, and if you’re a fan yourself it might be a good source for Halloween costume ideas this year!


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