Summary of activities for February 2009

• Loaded and Ready for WonderCon
• Steve and R2-XS
• Systm / Dancing R2 Video
• WonderCon Starts This Friday!
• Revision3 / Systm: SW Episode
• Revision3 / Systm – Studio Visit
• SF IndieFest – Fanboys
• Fanboys SF Charity Premier
• Fanboys, A Star Wars road trip film opens this week

We’re all loaded and ready to head out to WonderCon 🙂

Hope to see you at the Droid panel on Saturday.

Related:

• WonderCon Starts This Friday!

Here’s Steve with R2-XS!

I’d popped over tonite to help with some minor tuning before WonderCon, and to start loading the van.

You can’t really tell by this single photo, but the paint is actually a purple/blue chameleon formula that changes color in different lighting.

He even has a matching purple interior.

Here’s a short video of XS in action, he’s pretty speedy even with the heavy Optima battery in there 🙂

Short video shot by one of the staffers at Revision3

Notice the squeak? That’s one of my casters that needed some grease. It’s all fixed now, but it’s a good example of why you need to keep on top of regular checkups and maintenance.

WonderCon starts this Friday in San Francisco – Gerard, Steve, Tiny and I will be there with our droids and we’ll be hosting another builders panel.

It was a year ago that I first met Steve at WonderCon and got him hooked on droid building – he’ll be debuting R2-XS.

StarWars.com has also posted a run down on all things SW that will be happening that weekend, and it looks to be a busy one, with Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Daniel Logan, Ray Park and Matthew Wood will be there signing autographs.

Our panel is on Saturday at 12:30pm in room 236/238. If you’re planning on attending, please let me know or stop on by and say hi.

R2-D2 Droid Building Basics— Chris James, Ryan Goff, and Steve Simmons share their experiences and demonstrate working droids. Topics range from materials, tools needed, basic electronics, and radio control information to make your own R2 come to life! Special guest Don Bies, former ILM modelmaker and Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 droid wrangler.

The full programming schedule is now online here.

Related:

• More WonderCon Videos
• WonderCon Photo
• R2 Meets The Doctor
• Meet R2 Builders at WonderCon

Here’s the episode of Systm featuring Artoo

Luke, Darth and Obi-Wan’s Lightsabers were pieced out of junk piles. David shows you how to build exact replicas and an original design from The Custom Saber Shop. Then he picks a fight with Patrick.

[Episode Information and download page]

[Youtube Version]

Related:

• Revision3 / Systm – Studio Visit

I was invite to participate in an episode of Systm, a show on the Revision3 TV Network. The main hosts for the show are Patrick Norton and David Calkins of RoboGames and The Robotics Society fame (and fellow part time R2 Builder.)

My friend Ian was also there as Vader, and between him and Artoo they cause quite a stir, with a bunch of employees stopping by to check everything out.

Someone rushed in with their own Vader mask all excited

If you’ve seen Patrick on Systm or his work on the old ScreenSavers/TechTV show, you’ll know he’s a hacker and loves to take things part – Artoo was no exception.

I also tried to take some plain shots in front of the green and black  backgrounds. You wouldn’t think from looking at this shot that Artoo has gotten really beat up and weathered – but the right lights were very forgiving.

We did have some problems with the dome reflecting/picking up too much green, but they had a fix for that

At one point Patrick tried to stare down Vader and failed

Before we left Patrick gave Artoo one last hug to say sorry for trying to take him part

The episode hasn’t posted yet, but watch for it on the Revision3 website tomorrow or subscribe via iTunes.

As usual more photos in the gallery, as well as some in the official Revision3 Flickr page.

Here’s a couple of shots from the Fanboys screening at the San Francisco IndieFest two weeks ago.

The RL/501st were out in force, and the passers by in the Mission were kind of freaked out to see so much activity at this small theater.

Photo with some of the cast and crew, including Kyle Newman (Director), Jamie King, Dan Fogler (Hutch), Chris Marquette (Linus), and Sam Huntington is hidden in there somewhere.

Movie and Q&A was scheduled to start around 9pm, so we showed up around 8pm and were mobbed the entire time we were there

Gonk droid fan

Once the movie started we did get a chance to take some shots without the crowd

Uncle George was supposed to show, but didn’t – not sure what happened – but to be honest it was around 10:30pm at this point, so I can’t blame him for not showing.

We were supposed to head over to the after show party at Cellspace at 11pm, but I decided to skip it because the crowds were too much for Artoo.

[More photos]

See also:

• Fanboys SF Charity Premier
• Fanboys, A Star Wars road trip film opens this week