A friend just sent me this video from Sky TV in the UK, it’s from the international press day that I was involved in at the ranch for the new Clone Wars TV series

Watch for my droid at the beginning and at the 2:49min mark, blink and you’ll definitely miss him.

Related:

• Clone Wars Press Event at the Ranch
• More Clone Wars Press Event Photos

A few weeks ago we went down to Disneyland for a mini vacation. You wouldn’t think this would have anything to do with droid building, but you’d be surprised.

The night before we were to leave I’d spotted that the Lego guys would be at Downtown Disney building another giant R2-D2, so I fired off an email to Victor to see if he’d like to meet up.

As luck would have it he and Mike were free and we arrange something for both Saturday and Sunday evening.

Here we are with Stephen Gerling, Master Lego Builder, and the mini Artoo they use as reference when building the 8 foot model. I’d met him once before when he was in the Bay Area doing a similar event at the Hillsdale mall in San Mateo.

Sadly, the mall security wouldn’t allow them to bring in their real Artoo’s, but we did get to hang out for a while.

Of course no trip to Disney is complete without a few goes around on the Star Tours ride, which is full of droids

And here’s a few more Star Wars builds at the Lego Store in Downtown Disney

We also watched the “Jedi Academy” attraction in the park – no droids, but lots of action 🙂

Competition was fierce among the kids waiting to get picked to participate, I thought this little girl was very clever with her sign – and she was one of the first selected

Finally here’s a video I shot of Honda’s Asimo in Tomorrowland, almost a Star Wars droid right?

Related:

• Giant Lego R2-D2 Event
• 8-Foot Lego R2 (Victor’s Blog)
  
• Meet up with Chris and Revisited the Lego R2 (Victor’s Blog)
  

We didn’t go far for Halloween this year. The forecast was for rain, but I decided to camp out on the driveway with Artoo and big bucket of candy and waited for the throngs of kids to show up.

There were a couple of parties going on around me so I knew I’d get a good turn out, keeping my fingers crossed the rain would hold off.

Word quickly got out that there was an “Real” R2-D2 in town and people were coming from all over to see him. Someone proclaimed that I was giving the “Witches House” around the corner a run for their money 🙂

I was surprised by how many Star Wars character that showed up. I counted at least a half dozen Jedi and maybe as many clonetroopers. There was a sprinkling of Vaders and a couple of Princess Leia’s and one Queen Amidala and Clone Wars Anakin.

By 10pm I was out of candy and the wife called down and threatened to call the cops if Artoo wouldn’t shut up, so I called it a night.

Here’s a few photos from the evening, and as always there are more in the gallery.

“Vader, I am your father!”

C3PO stand in

Clone family

For most of the night Artoo was surrounded by kids, and it was even more difficult than usual to make sure everything was in check – but I got through the evening without incident.

Quite a number of the dad’s kept on coming back, and I could tell from the questions that the wheels were turning on how they’d get started.

This group of witches were probably the rowdiest bunch having trekked half way around town in heels to meet Artoo.

Related:

• Halloween at Hiller Aviation Museum 2008
• Halloween 2007 at Hiller Aviation

Here’s a few more photos from the Clone Wars Press Event courtesy of Lucasfilms.

I spy Dave Filoni

Original gallery here, with new additions on the last page.

Related:

• Clone Wars Press Event at the Ranch

Servo Magazine covered this years RoboGames in the October issue, including some photos of my Artoo in action in the BattleBot arena.

Get your copy at the newsstand or take a look at the PDF version of the article and see if you can spot Gerard and I in the group shot with our droids

Link: Servo Magazine – RoboGames 2008 (PDF)

RoboGames next year will be on May 1-3, and held at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

Related:

• RoboGames 2008 Report
• RoboGames 2008 – Day 1 Highlights
• RoboGames 2007

It’s Halloween time again and we got a return invite to the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos.

Like last year it was a low key event with mostly younger children and their parents in attendance.

Steve, his daughter Anna and myself showed up with Artoo Saturday afternoon, and were mobbed from the outset, it was hard to see Artoo at times.

What’s nice about children of this age is that they totally believe that Artoo is real and very rarely look for an operator.

This kid dressed as a Commander Rex was a real pain, he wouldn’t stop beating on Artoo and kept on trying to open panels or rip something off.

To escape we went on a little tour of the museum.

There were a also few bounty hunters there from Black Fleet, but it looked like most kids were scared of them 🙂

As always more photos in the gallery.

Related:

• Halloween 2007 at Hiller Aviation

Here’s another video from The Force Unleashed launch party in San Francisco featuring my droid.

[Link]

Related:

• Force Unleashed Launch Party

The Force Unleashed Launch Party was last night in San Francisco, and we were there to help along with the festivities.

LFL definitely know how to throw a bash, It was at the local Best Buy, strange I know but it really worked. The place was packed, and I was told that almost 1,000 people showed up during the course of the evening. I met people from all over the country and some people had even flown in from Europe to be there – crazy I know.

They’d built a stage high above the showroom floor and were doing give-a-ways ever 30 minutes or so,  they also had the various SW movies playing on all the big screens, and console where people could play the new game ahead of the midnight release.

All the major voice and character actors from the game were in attendance signing autographs and taking photos with the fans, and they had big backdrops from the game throughout the store for photo ops.

The Rebel Legion and 501st were also there in force.

It was Gerard and I with the Artoo’s, and Steve providing support. The store was so big we had plenty of room to roam around and not bump into one an other (most of the time.)

George arrived at 8:30 and spoke to the crowd briefly (see the video), followed by the character actors and developers talking about they’re expericence working on the project.

It was a long night, sadly I did not get to take as many photos as I’d hoped, but here’s some highlights, and there’s more coverage and photos in the links at the bottom of this post

Most of the networks were out covering the event and we recorded a few spots, including one for the 11 o’clock news, and Steve, our resident droid wrangler and spokesman, also did a few interviews, including this one with CNET.

And to prove he’s a real jedi, here he is practicing his force lightning

Sam Witwer (the Secret Apprentice) messing with the troops

Around 10pm the party was moved outside while the store was reset for the midnight opening. Sony had brought in special buses where people could play the game and one of the local radio stations provided a DJ.

By 11:30 we were all beat, cold, hungry and ready to call it a night, but were asked to go out one more time for the people waiting in line for the game. The 501st decided to form into a squad and did a circuit of the parking lot.

By midnight we were all exhausted, I think Boba Fett below sums up how we all felt, most of the troopers suited down and we swapped out our batteries for one last tour of the store before heading out with a copy of the game 🙂

Big thanks to Lucasfilm, especially Mark Franklin, for inviting us to this event and being super host.

Additional Photos and Videos:

• My complete gallery of photos
• Official Star Wars Blog
• CNET coverage and video and additional photos
• Kotaku – Photos and coverage
• io9.com coverage
• Matt Tolosa’s Photos
• Jessica (Juno Eclipse from the Rebel Legion)
• Mark Chu-Lin’s Flickr Set
• Roberto Moran’s (Sith Anakin) Photos