Sunday, July 24, 2016

Comicon 2016

Today, R2 (dressed as the red R5-D4) and I joined fellow R2 Builders Thomas Roeoesli, William Miyamoto, Michael McMaster, Chris Romines and Mike Senna and their droids, as we hosted the first ever R2 Builders panel at San Diego Comicon.

We were joined by special guest and fellow R2 Builder Lee Towersey, who, along with Oliver Steeples, built the R2 units and other droids for The Force Awakens.



The day started out by meeting up in a nearby parking lot to load the droids in a U-Haul truck for the trip to the loading dock at the San Diego Convention Center. Mike Senna helped to secure the droids for a safe trip.



All loaded and ready to go!



The droids arrived safe and sound, and we unloaded. Big thanks to Thomas for arranging this special unload so that we did not have to drive the droids through a crowd of 100,000 people.



Our panel was scheduled from 12:00pm-1:00pm (sandwiched by a lot of children's programming).



Shortly before our panel was to start, we moved our droids from a staging room to the presentation room.



At 12:00pm we got started, and discussed how the club works and how we build our droids. We had a full room, with lots of smiles and laughs as we went. Mike Senna demonstrated his BB-8, while William Miyamoto demonstrated his Baby-8.









After taking some questions, we left a little time for our special guest, Lee Towersey. Lee told his amazing story of how he went from fan to crew member on a Star Wars film. That story never gets old.



We wrapped up the panel with a selfie before heading out to allow time for the next panel to set up.



We drove and human-rickshawed the droids back to the truck, and wrapped up for the day.




And finally, apropos of nothing, here is some high art we saw at the restaurant we went to afterward.



We all had a great time, and I wouldn't mind doing it again. Thank you to my friend Kelvin for taking many of the pictures.

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