R2 Goes to School!

One of the great things I get to do with R2 is visit schools.  Today we went to Margaret Meade Elementary to do a presentation to the STEM students in grades 1-5.  What a smart and fun bunch!  Great questions and a lot of fun interaction.  The best part is we were invited by my granddaughter Rylie who is part of the 1st grade class.  School rules generally do not allow me to post pictures but we have special permission to show the 1st grade class on our blog.

Thank you to the STEM teachers and students who made our day fun!  We hope you enjoyed our talk.

ANA R2 Dreamilner Roll Out

Wow!  How did I ever luck into this one.  Got to work the ANA Boeing 787 Dreamliner roll out.  On Friday we had a practice session to place R2 (and C3PO) in relation to the crown and hangar door and then on Saturday morning at 9:00 am we did the roll-out.  Chris Bartlett (C3PO) and I had a great time.  Afterwards we got a private tour of the new jet on the line in the final delivery area.

R2 on Friday in his Boeing safety vest during practice

ANA Flight attendants in their new R2 uniforms

R2 & C3PO watch the roll out

Roll out picture from USA Today

R2 was a hit!

R2 Looking Good!

Wrapped up the day with a private tour of the new Dreamliner!

Emerald City Comic Con 2015 - Last Day

One of the fun things we do at Comic Con is a "Droid Parade" for the vendors before the show opens.  We also take time to visit the "cue" where all the people wait in huge lines for the con to open.  As we were wandering through the hall we ran into Anthony Daniels as a group.  He spent a lot of time with us talking about our droids and taking pictures.

 

First we got some pictures with Anthony and the Droids.

 

Then we had a picture with the whole group

 

 

Later we got a shot with some of the show "minions"  Thank you ECCC for a great show!

 

 

Emerald City Comic Con - Anthony Daniels

The highlight of ECCC 2015 was a very special guest - Anthony Daniels.  I had met him briefly at the EMP Museum and was excited to get him to autograph my back panel.  I had no idea that the weekend we turn out so fun for all of the R2 builders because Anthony Daniels was there.

 

Anthony Daniels signed my back panel and while we were doing that he remembered my R2 from EMP and we briefly discussed using him during his presentation in the main hall the next day.  I had no idea if it would work out, but the next day I went back to the stage and we discussed what R2 would be doing.  Grant Imahara (Mythbusters) was the host and when he asked Anthony about working with R2 in the movies he would say R2 was a pin in the butt and that was my cue.

 

 

Here is R2 waiting backstage for his cue.

 

 

R2 rolled out right on cue and the crowd went wild!  We had a fun interaction as Anthony talked about the challenges filming with the real robots.

 

 

Afterward the stage crew snapped a picture for me.  How fun to work with Anthony Daniels!  He is super nice and a real crowd pleaser.

 

 

 

Emerald City Comic Con 2015

As usual we had a really great R2 Builders Club booth at Emerald City Comic Con.  A total of 5 Droids in all different colors!  Booth looked just fantastic.

 

Here is a picture of the booth.

 

 

This is our "backstage" room provided by ECCC.  Very nice storage with great charging areas.

 

Star Wars Reads Day - October 11th 2014

Lots of folks waiting for the Museum of Flight to open for Star Wars reads day, October 11th 2014.  R2 is supposed to deliver the death star plans to seminars starting at 10:00am

R2 with friends from the 501st and Rebel Legion.  Just above their heads notice the nose gear doors of an SR-71 - a very nice backdrop!

Big crowds all day long.  The Museum hosted a very nice event.

 

 

R2 Hosted the awards ceremony in the main theater for the first annual Star Wars kids writing contest.  R2 is posing with one of the winners after the awards.

ECCC Day 3

Sunday was our NW Builders group panel at 11:00am.  We all met and then ran the droids en masse down to the room were the panel was going to be held.  A line of 6 R2 units running through the convention center created quite a stir (actually it was chaos) and they finally cleared a path to a loading elevator for the final trek.

The panel room was well set up by ECCC and had a nice audio and video board all ready to go.  We placed three R2's on each side.

The panel was packed, standing room only and unfortunately many people could not attend because we flat ran out of room.  Next year we hope for a larger space.  In the shot below you can see how full it was.  Also notice the computer screen in the bottom showing what was on the big screen up front.  Thanks to R2 buider Carol for running the show for us!

I also managed to get shots of all the R2's and their builders.  Left to right are Bob (me), Rob, Vincent, Cole, Todd & Chris.

ECCC Day 1

Friday morning Cole Horton and I arrived early to get things set up.  Before the show opened \a local TV station came by to shoot and evening magazine TV promo with Ray Park (Darth Maul).

We shot the promo with my R2 in the promo and Cole's red R2 providing the sound effects.  Ray was super nice and stayed for a few pic's with our droids.  The show is off to a great start!

Shorty after this and well before the show opened oCle & I took our R2's to the main floor.

Unfortunately just after I took this piture the crowd grew so large we had to return to out booth area because we were starting to clog the whole area!

Just after the show opened R2 & I went to visit Billy Dee Willaims and get an autograph.

I had finished the inside of my main rear door just for this and "Lando" was my first one of what I hope will be many!  Day one was a blast!!!  At the end of the day we had 4 beautiful Droids.  Left to right are Bob, Cole, Chris & Todd (at least their droids).

Museum of Flight

Every year I have the great pleasue of visiting the Seattle Museum of Flight on Presidents Day weekend.  Artoo and I get to hang out with the NW Scale Modelers who do a HUGE model show n the museum plus we get to do a stage presentation that is very popular!  This year Artoo and I got to do a photo shoot with the Museums Astronaut that is appearing in all the new commercials.

Shown above are the two of us inside the Space Shuttle Trainer.  This was the actual trainer used to train all shuttle astronaut's.  We are in the cargo bay - had to ride a special elevator to get in.  Really had fun with him and the museum photgrapher!

 

This view is looking forward to the cargo bay / crew compartment tunnel.  No chance of R2 getting in there!

 

 

Thanks again to the Museum of Flight!

American Library Association Convention

Interesting the things that come up for Artoo and I to do!  This one popped in at the last second from fellow builder Cole Horton.  A publisher needed R2 to appear in a stage presentation at the Seattle Convention Center- what a hoot this was!

The picture above was during the presentation with Tom Angleberger who wrote "The Strange Case of Origami Yoda".  Now I had never heard of this book, but if your about 10 years old I guess it is a huge best seller.

Tom was a great guy, loved working with Artoo and we had a blast onstage entertaining Librarians from all across the country.  He has a new book coming out soon, "Art2-D2's Guide to Folding & Doodling"

All in all we had a lot of fun seeing how Librarians fell for R2, getting our pictures taken and just plain messing about.  The Seattle Conventon Center staff & all the people from ALA were just great to work with.  We hope to return!

Left to right, Tom Angleberger, Artoo-Deetoo, Bob Jacobsen

Pacific NW R2 Builders Day

On October 27th several of the Northwest R2 Builders had an informal get together at Galaxy Hobby in Lynnwood.  Pictured above are (from left to right) Todd, Chris & Bob with their R2's

Another R2 builder Carol checking out Todd's R2 that is getting ready for motors and electronics.

Three R2's looking good.  Great thing about these events are sharing ideas and seeing better ways to do things.  I got a great idea from Todd's R2 that will help me with my arms (more later).  Also an excellent motivator to keep building or improving your droid!!

Star Wars Kinect Launch Party

R2 and I spent 4 days at Bellevue Square mall in the Microsoft store promoting the Star Wars Kinect launch.  What a wonderful time!  The store team was great to work with and the customers had a blast.  People just stopped dead in their tracks when they saw R2 and with the store staff talking with R2 and telling him where to go and what to do the effect was perfect!

R2 inspects the new xbox special edition.  Hmmmmm The paint job looks familiar...

R2 in the front of the Microsoft store.  This is a seriously beautiful place and R2 really liked the nice smooth and clean floors!

R2 inspecting the inventory. 

Thanks to the Microsoft Store and all the team members for having us!

Seattle Christian School

Seattle Christian school has a very new robotics program underway and we had the oportunity to go down for an assembly with the entire grade school to help promote it. 

 I had an operator so I got to interact with R2 as we talked about science, robotics and how I built R2

After the entire grade school was dismissed we got to meet with some of the robotics students for a more close up look at R2, was a very bright group of kids with great questions.

You have to love a principal who carries a lightsaber!!

Kinect All Access Video

The Microsoft Kinect All Access Episode 2 with my R2 is up on You Tube.

 

You can find it Here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ4wypo3vUU

R2-D2 Guest Hosts XBox Live Kinect All Access

Wow, R2 and I had a great time as R2 was the guest host of XBox live Kinect All Access.  We traveled to Microsoft Studios for the filming.  Arriving early because of touchy weather (it was snowing) R2 hung out in the building lobby for a few hours greeting many wonderful Microsoft folks.  It was a great time and lots of fun.  We then got down to work on filming.

Kate Yeager Kinect All Access Host

Nic Fillingham Kinect All Access Host

Kate & Nic were very nice to R2 and we all had a lot of fun working in front of the camera.  R2 behaved himself very well and is definately not camera shy!!

Scott Elnes - Producer & Writer