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.

Nerdist/Clone Wars Charity Bowling Event

Back on December 18, 2012, R2 participated in a shoot for Nerdist.com to help raise funds for the International Wolf Center. Here's the "big picture" from the teaser I posted back then.



This was a bowling event between the folks at Nerdist.com, and The Clone Wars voice cast team members Dee Bradley Baker, Cat Taber and Ashley Eckstein, along with Director Dave Filoni. Clone troopers Michael Bender, Kevin Weir, Carlos Cano and Daniel Cano joined along in the event, which was held at Pinz Bowling Center in Studio City, CA.

Here's the video of the event from nerdist.com.



The call time was a reasonable 9:30am. I made my way through rain and traffic, and arrived a bit early. I unloaded the droid and met up with the production folks, who decided to have R2 double as a camera-droid. A GoPro Hero 3 camera holder was taped onto R2's dome, providing a droid's-eye view via the R2-cam, as seen in the video.



Lights!



Camera!



Aaannd action!



Our mission was to interact with the teams as they bowled, sometimes cheering a strike, sometimes lamenting a gutter ball, and at other times being obnoxious and distracting them.

At one point around the 5:35 mark in the video (hey, I see myself in the background!), R2 even blasted Nerdist team member Alex with the mist as he was approaching the lane (he was told to!). R2 also screamed at him to distract him, around the 4:02 mark.

Some pictures.



The Clone Wars team ended up winning, 466-431.

Afterward, I took a few pictures as the teams posed for the introduction shot.



Everyone did post-game interviews, although I wasn't able to get a picture of R2 since I was controlling him.



I had nice chats with The Clone Wars team, and Ashley Eckstein's husband David, a former major leaguer, was kind enough to take the picture at the top of this post. Again, everyone with The Clone Wars team have been the nicest, friendliest people to associate with every time I've been involved in an event with them. It was an enjoyable time.

The full photoset is here.

Another Mystery Shoot

Today R2 was involved in yet another one of his famous mystery shoots.

As usual, all my pictures are too revealing, so I'll compromise and crop everything out of one of the pictures. That hairy arm on the very right of the photo does look like it could belong to me though.



I don't think it will take a ridiculously long time for this to be published, and I'll have more info to share at that time.

Christmas Breakfast & Fundraiser for Homeless Children

Today R2 joined many other characters from the Star Wars and other movie universes for Combat Radio's 2nd Annual Christmas Breakfast For Homeless Children, which combined a fundraiser and breakfast into a huge charity gathering. Lots of items were auctioned off, such as signed items by celebrities like Harrison Ford.

I hit the road at the tender hour of 5:30am for the 7:00am call time in Valencia, CA, some 75 miles north of me. Lest that sound like plenty of time, three of four freeway lanes were closed for a few miles, leading to lots of traffic. I arrived on time, and soon we had my R2-D2, Chris Romines' R2-A1 and Al Eisenmann's R2-D1 (and his Landspeeder and children/Ewoks), along with Michael McMaster's WALL•E set up.



Several members of the 501st also joined in.



The Marine Corps Reserve were on hand too, collecting lots of toys for Toys for Tots.



As the morning progressed, guests filed into the restaurant, and visited with the characters.



This dog named "Elvis" wasn't sure what to make of WALL•E (or Michael McMaster), but he kept a careful eye on him.



As the guests ate breakfast, the droids were left on the outside looking in.



A little later, Santa made an appearance, via fire engine rather than sleigh.



Toward the end of the event, all of the characters, including Merida, Rapunzel, Captain Jack and the Transformers, gathered for a group photo.



Lots of good work done for a good cause.