Given the fact Valve isn't in the business of making its own animated films (outside of TF2 advertisements), fan Alex Zemke is doing his own Portal flick. And going by the screens he's released so far, it looks as good as you'd hope the real thing to look.

The movie is called Companionship, and before you sigh that it's just a "fan" project, know the guy is a professional animator, whose credits include Disney movies like G-Force and The Smurfs and games such as Uncharted 2 & 3.

While it's still obviously early days, so much so there's no footage, these test renders and preview images are exactly what you'd want from such a project.

Portal Short Chell Test Render [DeviantArt, via Game Informer]

Toy company threeA held a signing and showcase event over the weekend in Hong Kong, and present at the show were our first good looks at the studio's upcoming Portal and Halo figures. We also get a look at their second Metal Gear effort as well, following on from the enormous Metal Gear Rex.

Halo Reach's Carter was there, in both painted and unpainted versions. Also there were Portal 2's co-op robots, both unpainted but still looking great. And rounding out the reveals was our first look at Metal Gear Ray, threeA's follow-up to Metal Gear Rex (which was also there, and showing off its light-up weaponry).

Portal 2's creation suite is coming to the PC and Mac this May. To celebrate, here's a trailer, starring JK "Cave Johnson" Simmons himself.

Action & reaction. Angles and speed. Momentum and inertia. Pinball is a game of physics. So is Portal. And that's what makes this homemade Aperture Science pinball table so great.

Reddit user iliveon built the working table with friends and says the goal is to get a pinball stuck in each portal. It's clearly a labor of love and could only be improved by having GLADoS making fun of you as you played.

via Reddit

Valve will release free Portal 2 downloadable content titled "Perpetual Testing Initiative" for PC and Mac on May 8, the publisher said today.

Valve says you'll be able to "easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles" with the new DLC, which lets you publish maps directly to Steam. Other players will be able to browse, vote, and download user-created maps to play in their own versions of the game.

For more on the upcoming level editor, check out our earlier coverage.

deviantART user wazzy88 just uploaded this beauty, and I immediately knew I'd have to have it.

Too bad the pokéball will undoubtedly not contain GLaDOS' famous snarky wit. Maybe you can hear it if you put it under water.

The GLaDOS Pokeball [deviantART via Reddit]

That game, Portal - Valve got the trademark after the original ceased using it - was a strange adventure title for personal computers, and was published by, of all companies, Activision.

Portal's story is a great one: you're an astronaut who, after spending 100 years in space on a mission, returns to Earth to find everyone gone and the planet an overgrown wasteland. Picture Life After People, only in a text-based adventure game.

Your goal, then, is to talk to a computer system called Homer, and by going back through its records try and piece together what happened. And that's it! No killing, no jumping, you were essentially digging your way backwards through a very depressing story. Think of it as Dear Esther 1986, if you will, complete with the very valid point that it was only half a game, the other half being some kind of interactive story.

Indeed, so heavy on story was it that in 1988 it was re-released as just that, a novel.

While that story is an interesting one, the game part left a little to be desired, your interaction with Homer being more than a little crude and obtuse.

Still, it had its fans, and that coupled with the name's popularity coupled with the current Kickstarter madness has its original creator, sci-fi author Rob Swigart, hoping to get the cash together for a "proper" remake, this time as " a full-fledged computer game with modern technology, music, sound effects, art, voice acting, and gameplay".

The song (a cover of Jonathan Coulton's now-infamous "Still Alive") is well done, too. Don't turn it off after the first few squeaky seconds. It gets better. I swear.

Bonus points if you spot the Duck Hunt dog. And the Skyrim giant.

Professor Shyguy - Still Alive (Portal Cover) [YouTube]

Dr. Who and Portal get an unlikely crossover in this 3D image by Aussie artist David C. Simon, who actually works as a writer at BioWare's Austin studio.

Aperture Daleks [The Dalek Factor, via technabob]