The Cake is Alive!

Seriously, Portal 2 is one of the most awesome releases of the year. Portal 2 is not a game for everyone, but it tries really hard to reward everyone for playing. In the first game, the dangling carrot was cake, and it turned out to be both a lie and the kind of meme that taught ignorant people to say “meme” far too often.

In Portal 2, the cake-dangling is rather different. Valve have wisely sidestepped around the “Cake is a lie” mantra, giving mere crumbs for fans of the original. Instead, the rewards are the immense satisfaction of a mind-bending puzzle well solved — and believe me, it’s seriously satisfying — and hilarious dialogue. Nearly every line spoken in the game is laugh-out-loud hilarious; even my girlfriend — who generally finds such things banal — was laughing.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that I was inspired enough to try and mimic the portal effect seen in the game(s). What you see in the above embed is merely an hour or so of playing in After Effects. I guess I knew what I wanted to achieve, and how to achieve it. The good part is that, since it’s such a simple effect, I can start iterating on the design. Much like Valve’s design philosophy (the developers’ commentaries in their games are gold mines for design tips), I can learn the technique, master it, and then apply it to my work.

So I’ve clearly started small. One Portal … big whoop. If I ever find the time, I shall start playing with how the portal device, as shown in the games, can make for some fun VFX.