Wondercon Anaheim 2013 - Day 3

Today we wrapped up the R2 Builders' appearance at Wondercon, at day 3 of the convention in the Anaheim Convention Center, in Anaheim CA.

Nothing too earth-shattering today. No panels, no celebs, no droid parade, no group picture, no Senna. I think exhaustion was starting to take its toll on all of us. Even the crowd wasn't as big, although I'm sure that's due in large part to it being Easter Sunday.

Chris Romines and I roamed the halls as the show first opened. Lots of folks were stopping us for photos, and luckily I found a photo-op area nearby.



Michael McMaster's WALL•E came across human counterparts of WALL•E and Eve.



Meanwhile, R2 encountered some human Star Wars Legos.



We were usually busy at the booth, but it wasn't quite as packed as it had been the previous two days.



Eventually, 5:00pm rolled around, and the show came to a close. We took down the banner and prepared our egress.



We got several invites to conventions big and small, so it probably won't be too long before we all next get together. It was a fun (but tiring) weekend!

The full photoset (meager as it is) is here.

Wondercon Anaheim - Day 2

Today marked day 2 of Wondercon, at the Anaheim Convention Center, in Anaheim CA. Some folks had a rougher night than others, as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man was passed out face down when we arrived in the morning.



We set up the booth a good ninety minutes before show opening. We arrive early mainly to secure parking. It gets crazy with 40,000 people attending.



The show opened, and we were non-stop busy the whole day.



Clone Wars voice actor Dee Bradley Baker stopped by a photo-op area to take some pics with a clone trooper and R2.



My droid and I did a brief interview for Stan Lee's web site.



The ladies from Team Unicorn helped to raise funds for Children's Hospital Los Angeles. For a $5.00 donation to CHLA, folks got to take a picture with Team Unicorn and some of the Star Wars characters, including R2.



One of my favorite costumes, an AT-ST attached to this young man, complete with sound effects. All he needed was a Chewbacca mask.



Ashley Eckstein, also of Clone Wars fame, visited and good-naturedly lobbied for her character, Ahsoka Tano. I like to think that my R2 is the official R2-D2 of Ashley Eckstein, but then I like to think a lot of things.



It's not a convention unless we're dragging Mythbuster Grant Imahara into our booth for a group picture.



Mike Senna showed Grant his reworked WALL•E drivetrain. It's quite a piece of machinery.



Toward the end of the day, we did one of our infamous droid parades, with 8 droids in tow. My droid was the third from the front, blaring out the Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade theme song.



Shortly thereafter, day 2 was over, and we locked up the booth. Just a short amount of time to rest up for the third and final day.

The full photoset is here.

Wondercon Anaheim 2013 - Day 1

Well, it's been a while since I've done an event, but we kicked off day 1 of Wondercon in grand style, at the Anaheim Convention Center, in Anaheim, CA. The R2 Builders were out in force.



Last night I had the pleasure of folding 300 club brochures, along with finishing up the presentation for our R2 Builders panel that I moderated.



This morning, we started setting up the booth, in preparation for the 12:00pm show opening.



The show opened, and despite the fact that it was a Friday and we were located way in the back, large numbers of attendees found us in no time. All told, I heard that they sold out the day at 40,000 people!



Some of the booth traffic eased up once Mike Senna and Michael McMaster rolled out their WALL•Es. Mike Senna also brought his R2, but it was upstaged by WALL•E.



Ed Perello brought his impressive assortment of R2 gadgets to display.



At 4:30pm I moderated an R2 Building panel with panelists William Miyamoto, Chris Romines, Michael McMaster and Mike Senna. We were semi-surprised to see quite a line forming before the panel started.



We were even more surprised to see that we packed the room with 375 attendees! Thank you to Mark Chu-Lin for the pic from the audience.



The famous Don Post joined us for the latter part of the panel and discussed the licensed replica props he produced back in the early Star Wars merchandising days. (Yes, I even take pictures while I'm moderating panels.)



Yahoo did a mostly accurate write-up of our panel here, although there were some minor misquotes and misattributions. Hopefully the link will work for a while.

We wrapped up with a group picture (thank you Katy McMaster), and non-stop questions and answers from the crowd that admired the robots.



We'll do it all again tomorrow!

The full photoset is here.