Rancho Cucamonga Star Wars Day
I had the honor of being asked to present R2-D2 at the Rancho Cucamonga Star Wars Day festival held at the Victoria Gardens Cultural Center for the Rancho Cucamonga Library’s 4th Annual Star Wars extravaganza! It was a fascinating place packed tightly with lots of kids of all ages. They wanted to see what made R2-D2 “go” so I treated them to a PowerPoint presentation of the construction of R2 and then they got to see what was inside. It was standing room only for 2 showings. In between, he was out and about mingling and several times became the piped piper of sorts as all of the kids followed him (single file of course…yeah right) everywhere he went.
Star Wars Musical
It has been a while since I have been able to make a post. I have been swamped at work but a narrow window opened up for me to participate in a Star Wars musical with my R2 droid. It was called Return of the Jedi: The Musical Edition. at the The Arts and Learning Conservatory in Costa Mesa, California on March 18th. It was a bunch of fun! The Musical Edition presents the story of Return of the Jedi with the music from popular Broadway musicals such as Phantom of the Opera and Chicago. The songs have been re-written to fit the story. The production is a full two-hour Broadway-style musical which will be performed with a live youth orchestra. The actors and actresses (ages 8-14) have rehearsed every Saturday for three months in preparation. It was funny and enjoyable to watch. The audience went crazy when my R2 went out into the crowd. Some of the screams and yells were akin to a rock star coming out to meet the fans. It was crazy……
Drink Tray
Here is the preliminary fitting for the 3 leg drink tray. I had a few more refinements like aging and distressing to perform but the basics were already done so I started by adding contrast into the recessed areas of the leg brackets. I used syringes with needle blunts to get to the small areas and then used Q-Tips to make sure that some of the black paint would NOT cover the gold (to make it look like the black paint was flaking off from age). Then I airbrushed the thinned acrylic black paint onto the clear coated arm supports to make them look used and slightly dirty. I think the effect looks pretty good…..The gold paint I used was Ford Aztec Gold. One of the things I noticed was that the pads of the drink try actually touch the R&J dome so I need to raise the pads a little to clear the dome profile. Putting a few washers under the screw attachments would raise the platform but would put too much stress on the screws so I needed to put a pad to raise the height up 1/8″.
On the way home……
On the way home I had a nice little chat with Seth Green. He and I flew back to California. On the way back we talked about the droids, robot building in general and I thanked him for the strong support he has shown R2 builders in the past. He said he wished he had more time that he could spend to admire all that we have done with the droids but with his schedule he was lucky with what he could do which he admits was very limited. It was a nice way to end such a spectacular week.
